


Ashes+Blood

by JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010), MacGyver (TV 2016), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Alternate Universe - X-Men Fusion, Angst, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-08-06 15:11:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16390055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter
Summary: Continuation of "Radiation+Mutations"When Project X is revealed to the world, Mac and his friends are forced to hide. But government agencies determined to turn Mac into a lab rat aren't their only concern when they discover that Patty Thornton is uniting mutants and calling for a revolution. With the help of some new and old friends, Mac, Jack, Riley and Bozer will be forced to take a stand...or watch their world burn around them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some of you might recognize this first chapter as the teaser I wrote a month ago for the MacGyver Fortnight Challenge on Tumblr. I've finally gotten around to starting the whole fic. Hope you enjoy it!

Jack’s more than a little surprised when he recognizes the phone number calling on his burner.

“Steve?” He’s not sure how McGarrett got this number. Only Matty has it. They’ve cut all other communication after Project X was reopened. It’s not safe for anyone to know where Mac is.

“Hi Jack. I hear you’ve got some...interesting problems.”

Jack trusts Steve. With his life. But how the hell could he know…

“I hear someone’s chasing mutants, and they’re looking for your little Sandbox EOD.”

Jack wobbles, sits down hard on the bench in the park they’re currently using as a campground.  _ How the hell could Steve know? _

“What…” He can’t get any more words out.

There’s some vaguely annoyed chatter in the background, then a scuffing sound, and a new voice comes over the line. “I’m sorry for the dramatics, he just couldn’t resist,” Jack hears Steve’s partner Danny say apologetically, before it sounds like he turns around and yells, “Do you want to give the man a damn heart attack? I told you to break it to him easy!”

“Okay, what the actual hell?” Jack asks.

“Mr. Freaking Navy SEAL here is an actual freaking mutant. Which, by the way, I totally called from the first day I met him.”

“Did not!” Jack hears Steve protest, and there’s another scuffle for the phone. It sounds like Steve wins, because his is the next voice Jack hears.

“I’ve been dark for years. It was part of an experimental program, got shut down right after I got fully changed. And I was told never to reveal it to anyone.”  _ Not even to me. _ Jack feels a bit hurt, but after everything with Oversight, he’s sort of getting used to being the last one in on secrets. 

“Please tell me you’re not another one who blows stuff up?”  _ I don’t think the world could take it.  _

Steve laughs. “I’m not a Navy SEAL for no reason, Dalton.” Jack can hear the teasing smile in his voice. “I control water.”

Jack sits quietly, letting that sink in. Then he voices his question. “So why’d you call?”

“Because someone found me. I’ve hidden my power well, but when I got home the other day, there was a woman waiting in my house. Called herself Chrysalis. And she asked me if I knew where to find an Angus MacGyver.”

Jack nearly drops the phone. Patty’s out there looking.

“Whoever she is, she knew about the program. She even used my code name, Riptide.” Steve sighs. “Whatever is going on, Jack, it’s big. And dangerous. Not everyone on that list turned out like me. Quite a few went insane.” Jack hears Danny snicker. “And if any of them agree to help her, you’re in serious danger. So I know it’s a lot to take in, and a lot of trust to ask for from you, but I’m offering you my help.”

Jack sighs and looks back at Riley and Bozer trying to set up their tent, and Mac starting a fire with the sparks flickering around his fingers. There are four of them, against God knows how many mutants Thornton can recruit. And the only one on their side who can fight fire with fire, quite literally, is Mac.  _ We’ll get slaughtered if they’re all like Walsh. _ Jack can’t forget the half-feral man’s snarls, the bared fangs and vicious claws _. And they could be even worse. _ “We could use all the help we can get.”   
  



	2. Chapter 2

Riley pulls her hoodie over her head, twisting her hands in the too-long sleeves to ward off the chill in the air. She’s a California girl, and the Colorado fall weather isn’t exactly balmy. She’s used to spending missions in the Arctic tundra or on the slopes of snow-caked mountains, but this is different. This is how they live now, packing up and moving from place to place to avoid being tracked. It’s a good thing they’re trained to disappear.

Riley vividly remembers sitting on the porch of Jack’s ranch when they got the call from Matty. James had decided, after all, to reveal Project X to the world. He’d gone public, a massive news conference in which he announced the existence of ‘mutants’ and the government program that created them.

The reveal of the project meant Mac was now legally government property. The military could show up at any minute and demand that Jack and the others hand him over.

Riley heard on a news broadcast that the authorities found James’s body two weeks later. He’d been killed in his own house by something big, something like a wild animal. _Officially, the police said it must have been some sort of bear attack._ But Matty sent them the security footage Phoenix pulled off the house’s security cameras before wiping them _. It was Walsh. He must not have died in that cave-in in Mexico._ And James had been dead well before that press conference announcing Project X. _Patty impersonated him long enough to set her plan in motion._ They don’t know if she was behind it all, or simply took advantage of the situation.

Riley can guess the rationale behind it. _Leave Mac vulnerable, on the run. Make him think joining up with his own kind or becoming a lab rat for the government are his only two options._ Revealing mutants has made Patty’s life riskier too, but the one thing is has guaranteed is that Mac is no longer safe.

They’ve been running ever since Patty’s fake James announced the existence of Project X. Avoiding populated areas, camping in remote wilderness parks like this one, where there are no cameras, few prying eyes, and plenty of room in case of an ‘incident’. Mac’s control has been worse recently. Riley’s sure it’s stress and worry, but whatever the case, he’s set three tents, one car, and too many clothes to count on fire.

After one particularly embarrassing incident in Utah, Riley makes sure she always carries a set of spare clothes in her backpack for Mac, just in case. _I’m never gonna be able to unsee that._ In his defense, there _had_ been a coyote that startled him, but still…

She supposes those inconveniences are offset by the fact that they’ve never had to worry about getting a fire going, in any kind of weather. And the tent at least is always warm.

She’s probably going to have to make another trip into the closest town for supplies soon. She can wipe herself off most security cameras, and people usually don’t notice her. She blends into a crowd in a way she learned inside. _Don’t stand out, don’t make yourself a target. Be invisible, and you live._

Except that they haven’t gone totally unnoticed. Jack got a call last night from one of his old military buddies, Steve McGarrett. The former Navy SEAL who now runs the task force Riley and the others briefly worked with last year. According to Jack, Steve had been one of the Project X test subjects, and had ended up with the power to control water. He’s on his way to meet up with them now. Riley thinks it’s a risk, trusting someone so easily, but Jack insists Steve is worth trusting. And Riley trusts Jack.

 _It’s sad that it’s come to questioning even our closest friends._ She knows Matty is risking her freedom or her life staying in contact with them. If the government finds out, she’ll be arrested for withholding the return of government property. Hearing Mac referred to as ‘property’ makes Riley sick and angry every time she picks up a newspaper and sees an article on their fugitive status. All other members of Project X are either dead, part of the military, or criminals like Patty. Some are registered with the government. The rest are being hunted.

Mac’s case is unusual. James, when he created the KX7 serum that could artificially create mutants, never intended to use it on his son. But his former partner, Jonah Walsh, kidnapped Mac and injected him with the serum as a revenge for James not allowing Walsh to be part of the test group for KX7. But the serum alone wasn’t enough to cause the mutation, and it stayed dormant in Mac’s blood until he was exposed to radiation at Chernobyl. Which triggered a catastrophic change that left Mac with the ability to convert ambient energy to powerful plasma rings and beams, and turned everything they thought they knew about Mac’s past, the Phoenix, and themselves upside down.

Riley’s busily shaking out the leaves from the tarp Mac insisted they spread under the tent when she hears it. The low hum of a small engine.

After everything she’s done with the Phoenix, she’s already on high alert before she even processes what the sound is. “Guys. Incoming.” That’s a motocross bike engine, and this trail is strictly off limits to all motorized vehicles. Whoever is up here is trouble of some kind. Jack’s already got his gun aimed at the opening of the trail, Bozer’s swinging some homemade rock-and-string contraption, and Mac’s hands are surrounded by flickering red.

Hopefully it’s just some kid deciding it’s fun to blatantly break the law. If they stay out of sight, maybe the rider will pass through and ignore their campsite entirely. Riley hunkers behind a tree, watching and waiting, her own gun pressed against her leg, finger pressed carefully along the trigger guard. _I won’t shoot unless I have to, but they won’t know that._ Now that they’re fugitives, she’s had to get used to the idea that it’s them against the world. _And I’m going to do whatever it takes to keep Mac safe._

Their luck is about as good as usual, which means it’s nonexistent. The bike skids to a stop in front of the fire, and Riley sees Jack stand up, take aim, and shoot out the front tire with a perfectly placed hit. The bike topples sideways, the rider barely leaping clear of the smoldering fire pit.

“Still trigger happy, I see, Jack.” That accent is shockingly familiar. “But you owe me for the ride now, you know. That was a rental.”

The rider gets up, pulling off their dark-visored helmet and shaking loose a long ash-blonde ponytail. “Ah, that’s better.” A very familiar face smiles at them. “It’s been a long time.” Samantha Cage says, walking over to Mac, who’s stepping out of the trees with a shell-shocked look on his face.

“How did you…”

“Find you? Well, that’s a rather long story. The short version being that I heard you were in trouble and could use some friends.” She shrugs and tilts her head and Mac flinches. Riley hears an echo in her brain, with Cage’s accent. _“I hear you’re one of us now.”_

“One of…” Mac stares at her. “You’re…?”

“I can read and communicate with minds. It’s been both a gift and a curse.” She shrugs. “And a side effect of it is that I can also track other mutant minds. I’ve been following you since I heard Project X was unburied.”

“Did you know? The whole time you were with the team?”

“I suspected. Your powers hadn’t manifested yet, but there was something about you I’d only ever seen in people with mutations. Which is why I stayed when Matty offered me the job at Phoenix. But then Leech found me, and I knew I was putting you at more of a risk by staying than leaving.”

“Who the hell is this Leech?” Jack asks.

“You call him Murdoc. The mutant community calls him Leech. His power...well, it’s not so much a power itself as it allows him to temporarily or permanently steal another mutant’s gifts.”

Something about this isn’t adding up to Riley. “But he didn’t take yours?”

Cage sighs. “Mind reading...is dangerous. It takes years to learn to control it; and some never succeed. Someone as unstable as Murdoc would have lost control and been overwhelmed. He knew he couldn’t take my power, but he wanted me out of the way.” She glances behind her. “But lately, I’ve heard stories. Mutants being attacked, powers severely drained. Sometimes they just turn up dead. Murdoc is back and everything tells me he’s coming after you.”

“He’s not the only one.” Jack holds up his phone. “I hear Patty Thornton’s looking for us too.”

“She’s looking for any mutants she can find. Word in the community is, she has a list. And she’s crossing them off or recruiting them.”

“She came to one of my friends. He’s going to be joining us.” Jack glances at Cage. “Ever hear of a mutant called Riptide?”

“Navy SEAL?” Cage looks slightly awed. “He’s a bit of a legend. Has some of the best control of his powers any mutant’s ever had. For a lab rat and not a born gifted, he’s impressive.”

“Born gifted?” Riley asks.

“Yes. Some of us, like me, aren’t experiments. It’s totally random. It doesn’t matter if your parents have powers or not. My father did, but my mother and sister are completely normal.”

“I thought it was only the KX7 that could create powers?” Bozer asks.

“It came from somewhere, didn’t it? James MacGyver didn’t create that formula in a vacuum. He created it from the blood of a born mutant. No one knows who, and the powers it gives are so widely divergent that we can’t begin to guess what that original mutant’s power was. But whoever it was, they were strong.”

Riley shivers at the thought. Both Mac and Walsh’s powers were incredibly strong. A mutant whose blood was used to make people like that... _what would that be like?_

“What are you doing here?” Jack asks. _Jack’s always the one with the practical questions._

“Like I said, everyone’s looking for you. I thought you could use some help.” Cage glances at Mac. “Sooner or later, Patty’s going to find someone like me. Someone who can track you. And then she’s going to come for you. And you won’t want to be alone when she does. She’s gathering supporters. I suggest you do the same.”

“He’s not alone,” Jack snaps. “He’s got us.”

Cage stares back, eyes cold. “You have no idea what’s coming.” Riley flinches as her mind fills with images of bared fangs, slashing bands of light, metal being twisted and warped under someone’s hands. “What are you going to do when the person you’re fighting has skin made of pure steel? When they can stop your bullets with their mind?”

“I don’t want to start a war,” Mac whispers, staring at his hands.

“But Patty does. And if she wins she will kill you and everyone you love.” Cage sighs. “I’ve been searching for others, people she hasn’t turned to her side. There are only a few who might be willing to stand and fight. Most mutants would rather hide. But I think it will be enough.”

Mac looks from his hands to Cage’s eyes. “I believe you. Where do we start?”

“Puerto Rico,” she says with a smile. “I think you need to meet Storm.”


	3. Chapter 3

They wait in the mountains long enough for Steve to find them. Well, as it turns out, Steve and the partner who sticks to him like he’s been super-glued there. Jack can’t blame him.  _ It really isn’t wise to let people with death wishes and superpowers out of your sight if you care about them. _

Danny, as per usual judging from the few times Jack met him, is complaining about “being dragged out to the ass-crack of nowhere and up a freaking mountain instead of waiting in town like normal people.”

Steve is the same as Jack remembers. There are a few more lines on his face, a few more scars, but there’s that familiar “I court danger for fun” sparkle in his eyes, and the same brash confidence in his walk. When he sees Jack he grabs his arm and pulls him into a massive hug.

“Man, it is good to see you again.” He pulls back and glances at Mac. “Hear you’re the new pyro. How’s that going for you?” Mac cringes slightly.  _ Steve’s never been the kind of guy to say anything gently. _ Jack jumps to cover the awkward pause.

“Ah, you know, we’ve lost a few tents, a car, one of my AC/DC t-shirts, which I am  _ still _ not going to let you live down,” Jack grins at the sheepish look on the kid’s face, “but he’s worth keepin’ around.”

“You should have seen me when I was starting out. When I was SEAL training, Coronado being right on the ocean was a blessing and a curse. There were not one but three unexplained minor tsunamis during my training.” He shrugs. “Only two did actual property damage. I’m pretty sure they were all explained as experimental weapons tests. Which for once wasn’t even technically a lie.” 

“I feel a little better about accidentally trashing the War Room, then.” Mac says. He’s glancing from Jack to Steve. “I’m...kinda destructive too.” 

“Do you mind letting me see?” Steve takes Mac’s hand gently, rolling it over. 

“Um...when I do it, bad things tend to happen,” Mac whispers.  _ He’s still not all that confident. Only uses it when it’s an absolute necessity...or when he loses control.  _ He was doing so well at the ranch, too. Before they had to go on the run.  _ Now he’s right back where he started, because he’s scared. _

“You’ll be fine. Trust me. I can put out any fire you start,” Steve smiles at him. “I know, it can be a little weird at first. But it’s not going away. It’s part of who you are now, and the sooner you accept that, the better off you’re gonna be.” He shrugs. “Take it from someone who’s had sixteen years to get used to the idea.” 

Mac bites his lip and rolls his shoulders. “Get back.” Jack, Riley, Bozer, Cage and Danny all scatter for the trees. Riley and Boze peek out from behind one. “I said, get back!” There’s a vulnerably frightened crack in Mac’s voice. Steve must hear it too, because he does actually step back to the treeline. 

Mac clenches his fists, and Jack sees the red glow forming around his hands and chest. _ He hasn’t used his full powers, at least not intentionally, for weeks now.  _ There have been plenty of accidents, because the kid’s jumpy as hell now, but he hasn’t done this on purpose for too long. 

The bright red rings start to form around Mac’s body, and Jack resists the urge to make yet another joke about hula hoops.  _ I’m pretty sure that would only put him more on edge.  _ Mac isn’t too receptive to even friendly jokes about his powers.

The rings fly in all directions, two of them slicing through trees and leaving singed stumps with flames flickering along the tops of them. Mac sighs defeatedly and looks down at his hands.  _ Well, at least his clothes survived mostly intact this time.  _ Jack’s pretty sure Steve would never let the kid live it down if he’d managed to burn them off like he did in New Mexico.  _ Riley’s already never gonna let that go. She swears she’s mentally scarred for life. _

Mac shudders, glancing from his hands to the smoking tree stump.  _ He lost all the control and focus he’d been getting.  _ They’d never gotten the containment suit properly fixed after the fight with Walsh, and Mac was getting pretty good on his own before the whole Project X disaster. But now…

“Okay. You showed me yours, so I’ll show you mine.” Steve grins and scrambles down the hill to the lake behind their campsite. He plunges one hand into the clear, cold water and a shockwave of energy spreads out from it, the water bubbling and rippling, then forming into shimmering ridges. A tower of water begins to rise in the middle of the lake, spiraling up to a point. Slowly, it begins to rotate, then faster and faster until a fine mist flies out from it and spreads across the lake. Steve pulls his hand back and the tower collapses in a rainbow spray.

“Holy crap.” Riley’s staring, eyes wide. 

“That’s not even scratching the surface.” Steve stretches out a hand and water flies up from the shore, forming itself into a sort of shield in front of him. He rolls his wrist and the water coats his hand and rises up his arm to his shoulder, and when he flings his hand away from himself creates a jet of spray that knocks a sapling over with so much force it uproots.

“Man, this woulda been nice when we were pinned down in Myanmar,” Jack mutters. “I thought with water to our backs we were screwed.”

“He claims he wasn’t allowed to use his powers after the program he was part of went under,” Danny mutters. “Seriously, man, do you know how many times he  _ wouldn’t  _ have gotten shot or stabbed or drugged or whatever freaky shit we get into on practically a weekly basis? I’ve been asking him that for years now.”

“People with powers aren’t exactly popular, in case you haven’t noticed?” Steve gives a long-suffering sigh. “I’d either have gotten hauled off by the government for violating the Mutant Military Service Codes or been chased down by a local lynch mob.”

“You couldn’t have pretended to be some Hawaiian sea god or something?”

“Danno…” Steve only shakes his head.

“You know I was joking, right?” Danny says. “Okay, please tell me no one here but McDonald’s over there has powers.” Jack can’t help a small chuckle.  _ Wow. His name really has an unfortunate tendency to get associated with restaurants. _ “I don’t think I can take any Danny suddenly stumbles backward, trips over his own feet, and lands very ungracefully on his back in the lake. 

Cage is trying to hold back a smile.  _ Oh man. She musta got into his head.  _ Steve isn’t bothering to hide his laughter at all as he gives his partner a hand to get back on his feet. “She’s a telepath, Danno.”

“Well, excuse me for not being able to identify mutants on sight!” Danny grumbles.  _ Can people do that? _ “Hey, you gonna fix this?” Steve rolls his eyes but holds out one hand, and the water dripping from Danny’s clothes rolls itself into a ball in Steve’s grasp. 

“So….” Jack asks, feeling a bit confused. “Is...can you all tell that someone has powers?”

“After a while, mutants sort of tune into certain things about other people that are pretty good indicators.” Steve shrugs. “Like, I’d notice Mac’s power if all I was doing was standing in the same checkout line at a grocery store. There’s a kind of hovering energy, and right now it’s pretty noticeable.” Mac bites his lips and twists his hands together. “How long have you had this?” Steve asks, gesturing to Mac’s hands. “You’re acting like it’s a pretty recent development.” 

“Couple months.” Mac shrugs. “Time’s not really that easy to keep track of when you’re surviving one day to the next.” 

“So you’ve barely tested the waters, so to speak,” Steve grins. “Most powers don’t mature until you’ve had them at least a year. And yours are already impressive.”

That clearly didn’t reassure Mac at all. Jack watches the kid flinch, staring down at his hands.  _ If this gets any more powerful, what is he going to do about it?  _  He’s already terrified of losing control.  __

Sam must have noticed Mac’s increasing anxiety, because she steps up and places a hand gently on his cheek. Jack watches as the tension drains out of the kid’s shoulders and he relaxes into the touch. Sam turns to Steve with a slightly scolding expression.

“He’s new to this. And he didn’t have anyone to train him. You had Project X. I had a family.” She shakes her head. “You don’t like to say things gently, do you?”

“I’ve always been told I’m a force of nature,” Steve laughs, but his eyes soften as he glances at Mac.

“Well, you and Storm might have to share that title,” Sam mutters. “I think you’re either going to like him or challenge him to a duel on sight. Speaking of which, we’d better be moving. As far as I know, Patty hasn’t recruited a telepath yet, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. And once she does, she’ll be able to track mutants like I can. Then nowhere will be safe.” 

“Give me a minute.” Steve bends down next to the lake and pulls a handful of water to rest in his palm.

“What’s that for?” Mac asks curiously.

“I’m sure you’ve already learned, powers don’t come without a price. If I’m too far from water for too long, I start to weaken. Sun’s getting decently hot out here, and I’d rather be at full strength if we run into any problems”

Suddenly Steve’s dizzy spells in the high desert ops make sense. Jack always thought it was just normal heatstroke, and he remembers teasing the Navy SEAL for not being able to tough it out with the army grunts.  _ And the whole time, it was dehydration acting on his powers. _

“Mine just hurts,” Mac says quietly. “If I don’t keep it under control, it feels like it’s tearing me apart. I got better at it, but…” Jack wonders if the real thing Mac’s gotten better control of is showing his pain to the rest of his team. 

* * *

Cage’s power turns out to be surprisingly useful. They don’t even need to show IDs to board a flight that will get them from Denver to Puerto Rico.

“Why didn’t you use this on that casino chick?” Jack asks. 

“I did. That’s the only reason she left us alone in that basement. I made her think her best option was to keep searching the hotel rather than interrogate us.” She winks at him. “And, quite frankly, it’s the only reason you didn’t blow your cover in the first minute.” 

“You’re lucky,” Mac whispers quietly as he takes a seat beside them. Jack guesses what he really means is,  _ lucky you can hide your power. Lucky no one can see it. _

“Try living with a thousand voices in your head every second of every day, then talk to me about easy.” Cage’s voice is a little bitter. “Like McGarrett said, every power has a price. If I lose control, I’ll drown in all the voices in my head.” She sighs. “That’s why I live in the middle of nowhere in Australia. So for a little while, when I go home, there’s some peace.”

“I’m sorry.” Mac glances away from her, out the window at the rapidly disappearing ground. “So, who is this ‘Storm’?” Jack can tell he’s trying to cover his mistake.

“Carlos Rivera. He wasn’t originally a member of Project X, so Patty won’t know to look for him, which means it’s relatively safe for us to recruit him.”

“Another born mutant?” Riley asks.

“No. He received an emergency in-field blood transfusion from a member of his team who  _ was _ Project X. One dirty IED later, and he nearly buried his camp in a sandstorm. The radiation was enough to activate the gene still in his body.”  _ Another accidental casualty of James’s overeager experimentation. _

Riley speaks up. “Why didn’t anyone notice he had powers then? Did they say it was some freak of nature accident?”

“His team protected him. The team member who gave him blood had the same power, and claimed he’s the one who lost control. Carlos doesn’t know what happened to him. He finished the last month of his tour and came back to Puerto Rico. He’s been hiding his power ever since.”

* * *

Jack can’t help but feel a little sick at the sight that awaits when they get off the plane in Puerto Rico. There are ruined houses, rusted cars, and torn up trees everywhere.

_ Hurricane Maria was months ago, but they still haven’t recovered. _

Cage ‘convinces’ a farmer to loan her his truck, and they drive off. “What? I’m going to return it, and pay him for it,” she says when Riley gives her a disapproving look. “Would you rather walk to Trujillo Alto?”

The roads are a mess, full of downed trees and sinkholes. It takes an hour and a half more time than it should have to reach a ruined neighborhood. A man is standing, apparently pulling roof trusses up onto a framed house by himself. But Jack notices a small swirl of wind tossing leaves and debris on the ground.  _ There’s not a breath of wind on this island today.  _ They’ve had the truck windows open to catch any possible crossbreeze, because there’s no AC.  There was also no breeze.

Cage lifts her hand, and the man stops pulling on the rope. His face goes slack, but then somwhere down the street a child yells and Cage must break concentration, just the slightest bit. The man stumbles, staring at her, and then bolts. The roof truss crashes to the ground, only to be stopped by three thin spouts of water that seem to be rising directly from the ground. Cage raises her hand again, and the man Jack guesses is Carlos stops mid-step as if someone’s paused him. 

“Carlos Rivera! We only want to talk!” Cage says. Jack climbs out, watching as Steve carefully lowers the truss to the ground.

“There’s still a lot of residual water in the soil,” he says, shrugging. 

“Leave me alone. I swear, I’m not letting anyone see it. I’m not putting anyone at risk.” The man is shaking his head, and sounds like he’s on the verge of a panic attack. He’s on the tall side, Jack notices, but his shoulders are slumped almost defeatedly, and he looks older than Jack would guess he is. He can’t have too many years on Mac, but his hair has already gone almost totally grey-white.“What do you want with me?”

“We’d like you to help us.” Cage says quietly. “Pretty soon, it won’t matter if anyone sees your power or not. Mutants are being hunted down and killed or dragged into a war. And if we don’t stop it, a lot of people are going to die.”

“Lady, I can’t help you.” The man sighs. “I don’t even have enough control to stop this.” He gestures at the devastation still surrounding them. 

“We don’t need you to be able to control it. We just need you to be able to use it.”

“I can’t leave my family!”

Riley steps up and gently puts a hand on Carlos’s arm. “If you come with us, I promise, we will protect them. You can stay, and you can protect them alone, or you can let us help. But when the people hunting mutants find you, I promise, they will know your family is your weakness.” 

Carlos sighs. “I know you mean well. But I left one war. I promised Nina I would never go back. I swore on my daughter’s life.”

“We’re trying to stop this war before it starts.” Steve says quietly. “Because if people on either side have their way, it’s going to be a slaughter.”

“If I come with you, you promise my family will be protected?”

“With our lives,” Mac says, and Jack sees the fire flicker over his hands.  _ He’ll die before he lets harm come to any innocent person. Especially someone like Carlos’s wife or child. _

“And I won’t have to use my power unless it’s necessary?”

“Of course,” Cage reassures him. Suddenly Jack thinks he might know what Danny meant about knowing mutants on sight. Cage’s pale eyes look like they’ve gone almost crystalline. She’s doing her mind meld thing again. Carlos’s shoulders shudder and he glances from her to the others, and then at his own hands. His eyes are wide with a mixture of fear and anger.  _ What is she doing? Showing him what the world will be like if we fail? _

Carlos looks from his unfinished house to the pickup truck. Then he walks to the truck and climbs into the bed of it. 

Jack sees the pain in Mac’s eyes as they walk back.  _ As much as none of us want to admit it, we’re recruiting soldiers. For a war.  _ And the price of losing will be their lives. Jack glances at Steve, Mac, Carlos and Cage.  _ All of them know what it’s like to sign on for something that could cost their lives.  _ But being mutants...most if not all of them didn’t have a choice.  _ Steve, knowing him, probably volunteered. But Cage was born with it and Mac and Carlos were never given a choice either.  _ Jack hates the truth, but it’s right there in front of him.  _ They’re all trapped. Destined to fight a war they never wanted to be part of. Just because of what runs in their blood.  _


	4. Chapter 4

Riley once thought working at the Phoenix had shown her the strangest things the world had to offer. She can’t believe how wrong she was. Watching tiny flickers of lightning crackle around Carlos’s hands, matched by a soft glow from Mac’s and the ball of water Steve is casually tossing from hand to hand while they talk to “Storm” and his family in their temporary housing fascinates her.  _ What is it like to literally hold so much raw power in your hands? _ She’s always felt like it would be insensitive to ask Mac. But Steve is very comfortable with his powers and she doesn’t think he’d mind if she asked.

But the most pressing thought on her mind isn’t what people who have powers experience, it’s how people without those gifts work with people who have them. For that, she’s going to need Danny. She moves seats so she’s sitting next to the Jersey native, who’s watching Steve with a half-amused, half-exasperated grin.

“Show off,” mutters to her. “He never gets to do that kinda stuff normally, so when he has the chance he gets cocky.”

“How long have you known?” Riley asks hesitantly. 

“Since he got captured and waterboarded for a solid fifteen minutes and came out of the whole thing without brain damage  _ or _ pneumonia.” Danny shrugs. “I mean, the brain damage was one thing, I think he’s already fried it a long time ago, but he didn’t even seem  _ affected. _ I sat next to him on the plane home, and badgered him about SEAL training until he just stopped me and told me everything.” He shakes his head. “I mean, it had been two years since I met him. Guess he’d made up his mind he could trust me or something.” He looks back at Steve. “I think he really just wanted to be able to play stupid games with water in  _ my _ car.” 

Riley glances back toward the three men. Only Steve looks comfortable in his own skin. “Did he ever seem... um, afraid of what he can do?”

She expects Danny to respond with a resounding no, and tell her about how much Steve loves his power, but instead he nods, slowly. “I saw security footage of him fighting this guy, another gifted who was after us and captured Steve after a while. The guy called himself Wo Fat, and he had some kind of pyrokinesis. Nothing like your kid’s, though. Steve ended up filling the room with water to drown the guy. And when we got there, when we got him out, he looked horrified. He’d been fine, but he’d literally watched that other mutant die, slowly and painfully, because of  _ him. _ I didn’t see him use his power again for weeks.”

Riley shivers. She can’t imagine what that kind of situation would do to Mac. His power  _ has  _ killed, he’s even intentionally used it for that in the fight with Walsh, but his kills almost instantaneously. To have to watch, for minutes, trapped with someone, even his worst enemy, would wreck him.

“Steve’s not all jokes and smiles and stupid bravery. He cares. Wo Fat was manipulated, tortured, in his own country, for having powers. His people thought he was cursed. Steve’s mother rescued him from that, but it was too late for his broken mind. Steve never gave up though. He kept hoping Wo Fat could change. He wanted them to be brothers, to heal their pasts and change the world together. But all Wo Fat wanted was to burn it down. And in the end, Steve had to kill him to save the rest of us.” Danny sighs. 

_ Funny how these old soldiers have the softest hearts of all of us. _

* * *

 

Sam’s got another lead, a mutant in Georgia with actual  _ wings. _ They’re standing in the crowded San Juan airport, about to board their plane when Cage gasps, stumbles, and falls against a wall, sliding down until she’s sitting on the floor.

Riley and Carlos are the first to get to her. She’s already struggling to her feet, but her eyes look clouded and pained. She stumbles past the others to lean heavily on Mac, hands on his shoulders. She gasps and shakes her head, clearly in pain. And then whatever it is passes, and she stands up a little straighter. People milling around have stopped to stare. Riley starts to worry, but in the next minute all those people being moving again, with blank stares and almost mechanical motions. Sam must have worked her magic on them.

“Cage? Are you okay?” Mac asks, putting his hands on her arms and pushing her back gently. 

“There’s someone, someone like me, looking for you in LA.” Cage glances at Mac. “I can’t get a clear visual. There’s a sharpness in her mind, something cold, fragmented. Like ice. She’s trying...she’s trying to find  _ you _ .”

“Is it one of Patty’s?” Jack asks.

Sam shakes her head, biting her lip.“I don’t think so. There was a lot of fear, a lot of confusion. It just felt like someone who wanted help.” She glances at Mac, a small crease of worry between her eyes.

“I should go, then.” Mac glances at the others. “You don’t have to come. LA will be dangerous. Too many people looking for us, or just for mutants in general.”  _ Oh Mac. Always the self-sacrificing one.  _

“If you think we’re bailing out on you, you’ve got another thing coming,” Jack says. “I’ve always got your back, no matter how bad it is. Can’t be worse than Cairo, right?”

“I’m coming with you,” Riley says.

“What she said,” Bozer mutters. “No way we’re letting you go alone.” 

The other mutants step up as well. Steve puts a hand on Mac’s shoulder gently. 

“We’ve got years of experience hiding from normal people. A few more days won’t kill us,” Steve says. Danny groans but is right beside him.

Riley doesn’t have to be a mind reader to know what they’re thinking.  _ This could be a trap. And at the very least, if Cage knows someone’s looking for Mac, Patty and her team might be able to figure it out too.  _

Mac looks more than a little concerned that he’s somehow becoming  the leader of the group.  _ He didn’t want any of this. And if anything happens he’s going to feel responsible.  _ Riley knows how much he tries to protect them in the field.  _ He’s always considered himself the one who should get hurt. If anyone’s going to be at risk, he wants it to be him.  _ He’s never quite gotten used to the idea of people willing to follow him anywhere, no matter what. Jack has been trying to prove that to him for years, and it seems like maybe he’s starting to accept that. But his powers were a huge setback. He pushed everyone away, even Jack, because he was afraid to hurt them. 

She sits next to him on the flight they catch that takes them to Dallas and from there to LA. He doesn’t say much, and neither does she. With her on one side and Jack on the other, they just sit there in silence and wait. Because no one knows what will happen when they land. 

Thanks to Cage’s gifts and Carlos electrically overloading the security cameras, they make it through LAX and into the city undetected. Cage is able to home in on the person she felt, but it’s causing her a lot of pain. She passes out at least four times in the back of the Dodge Caravan Jack hotwired, the only thing big enough to fit the entire contingent of them. Whoever this person is, their mind is a painful place. 

After the last time she drops like a stone and Steve splashes a small sprinkle of water on her face, Cage sits up, panting. “I got a decent visual this time. Whoever they are, they’re at the Phoenix.”

_ This feels like a setup.  _ If Riley didn’t know that Matty Webber had become the new Oversight when James was found dead, she’d guess this was a government trap. But Matty wouldn’t steer them wrong. 

Not five minutes later, Jack’s burner phone rings. It’s Matty. “Jack, if you’ve still got this phone and Blondie didn’t take it apart for one of his crazy inventions, there’s something you need to hear.” Riley can hear Matty’s voice easily, and Jack holds the phone away from his face with a grimace. 

“Actually, it’s kind of a long story, Matty, but we’re on our way there now,” Jack says. “Probably about fifteen minutes out.”

“I don’t even want to know,” Matty sighs. “Stay safe. I’ll see you then.” 

When they pull up outside the building, Riley has a strange feeling.  _ I used to belong here. Come here every day.  _ Now it feels foreign and dangerous. She looks at the outside of the building with all the glass and metal, and she doesn’t feel the pride of belonging to something so amazing. She just feels a vague, gnawing fear that something isn’t right.  

Matty meets them at the door. “She’s in the War Room.” Riley has no idea who this mysterious mutant is. But Matty looks like she’s seen a ghost. And then Mac opens the door, and someone with long black hair stands up and whirls around to face him. 

_ Zoe Kimura? _ The  _ last _ thing Riley expected was to see the brave young woman alive again.  _ But we watched her drown. She didn’t have powers...or she couldn’t show them until the cameras cut out. _

“Zoe.” Mac sounds like he’s choking. He stumbles to a chair and sits down hard. After all the insane things they’ve seen over the past few months, this is arguably the most stunned Riley has seen him look since he accidentally blew up the warehouse in Serbia. 

“Please, I need your help,” she whispers. “I can’t live like this.” And then Riley watches in shock as her hand, then her arm, turn to crystalline, clear ice. “Can you fix me?”

Mac sighs, holding out his hand, and Zoe gasps when the reddish fire flickers up. “I can’t even fix myself. But I can help you learn to control it.”

“You...you too?” she asks.

“For a few months.” He sighs. “I’m not doing too well adjusting either. I’ve already burnt at least two cars and a small shed, not to mention a few dozen shirts.” In spite of the tension, Zoe giggles, and it reminds Riley of the way they talked on the video feed. Finding something to connect with, something to keep them calm, in the middle of chaos. Searching for normalcy in the most abnormal situations. 

“I didn’t know where else to go,” Zoe says quietly. “You said you specialized in unusual solutions for unusual problems at the Phoenix, so I came here hoping you could help. But by the time I got back, the world was in chaos and people like me were being hunted. I didn’t have anywhere else to turn. I didn’t know you were a mutant too.”

He smiles sadly. “Lucky us.”

“Hey, guys, let’s give them some space,” Jack mutters softly, and Riley realizes, belatedly, that she’s been staring.  _ I just can’t believe she’s still alive.  _

“I don’t remember seeing her anywhere on the list of Project X subjects,” Riley whispers to Cage. “Could she have gotten it from a blood transfusion too?”

“She may have been born with it, Riley,” Cage says quietly. “Powers sometimes don’t manifest until triggered by trauma. I got mine when I was four and fell into that pool. It’s the only way my mother was able to find me and pull me out.” 

Riley shudders.  _ I can’t imagine what it would be like to remember every time you used your power, that you only got it because you almost died.  _ She turns back to the conversation. 

“It happened on the ship,” Zoe says, twisting her hands in a loose string of her tattered jean shorts. “Right after...after the computer died.” She’s shaking. “I could feel myself freezing, but it didn’t hurt. I knew something was wrong as soon as I was in the water, but I’d never frozen to death before, so I thought that was all it was. And then it felt like I didn’t  _ want  _ to be warm anymore.”

“Like if you did it would kill you,” Mac whispers. “I had a fever, that’s how mine started. It felt the same.”

“I wanted to be there. But the water was still drowning me, even if I wasn’t freezing,” she whispered. “And then this happened.” She holds out the hand that’s pure ice. “The side of the hull was already damaged, so I froze the metal and shattered it with a pipe I found, then swam up to the surface. I almost drowned before I broke through the ice.” Riley can see the respect in Mac’s eyes.  _ She’s as resourceful as he is. _ “I knew I couldn’t go back to the ship; everyone thought I was dead and I was afraid to tell them the truth about this. And by then it was my whole body that was ice. So I just ran. The ice stretched to shore, I ended up in Alaska, and spent a couple weeks at an abandoned hunting cabin trying to figure this out.” 

“Why did you come here?” Mac asked. 

“I couldn’t live there for the rest of my life. And it hurts. I can’t control the change, and my ice form is fragile. I get cracks easily, and it marks my human side like bruises or cuts.” She glances at him. “I’m afraid of tripping or falling, anything that might break me. I don’t know what would happen. And I can’t live like this.” She shudders. “And then I started seeing the Shards.”

“What?” Mac asks.

“That’s what I call them. Bits of thoughts in people’s heads. It didn’t start until I got closer to cities. Maybe it happened right away but I was in the middle of nowhere. And it kept getting stronger.” 

“Steve’s had his powers for years. He says it takes about a year for them to reach full strength.” Mac looks back toward Steve then glances at his hands. “I’ve had mine for three months and I’m nearly as destructive as a small nuclear blast.”

“I thought maybe the Phoenix could help me. It was a think tank, and I was hoping maybe this was something someone had researched. But when I realized I could send Shards out and not just feel them, I started calling for you.”

“Samantha heard you. She reads minds.” Mac grins. “It’s how we knew where to come looking.”

“How many of us are there?” Zoe asks, eyes and mouth wide.

“Hundreds,” Cage speaks up. “Like he said, Steve controls water, Carlos here can control the weather, and I’m a telepath.”

Zoe looks at Cage pleadingly. “Do know how to...how to make it stop?”

“I’ve learned. I can show you; my powers manifested early. You’re one of the few people I know who didn’t get their powers until they were adults. Well, at least if they were born with them.”

“Born with...what else is there?”

“You didn’t hear about Project X I guess,”  Mac says quietly. “My...my father was experimenting with ways to heal people better. And he accidentally found the same gene that people who are born with the powers have. He created a drug to splice the gene into normal humans’ DNA, and then if they’re exposed to radiation…” Light flickers over his hand again.

“And he tested it on you?” Zoe pulls back, shock crossing her face. 

“No. He told me his old partner got angry with him and injected me with it for revenge. But I wasn’t around enough radiation to make me change until a few months ago.” Mac bites his lip. “I wish I was born with it. That would have made everything easier.” 

“I guess, in a way, I always knew. I was always fascinated with ice and cold.” Zoe whispers. “But...I couldn’t do this...until after.” She sits down on the arm of his chair. “So this is the room you turned into my ship? It looks different in person than it did on screen.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Mac grins, a real genuine smile, for the first time in a long time. “That’s the window I smashed out to make it big enough. Matty was really really mad. Funny thing was, when I got my powers I broke  _ all _ those windows and she didn’t even get upset.”

Riley looks down at her boots, remembering that moment. Mac, furious with Matty for keeping secrets. The wildly ricocheting rings of light. Fire and scorched walls and screams. And Mac, huddled on the floor, terrified of himself and hurting. She never wants to see anything like that again.

She jumps, because someone’s holding her elbow. It’s Matty, and the woman’s face is unreadable. “You should come with me. All of you. I’ll tell them afterward,” she says when Riley glances back at Mac and Zoe.

They assembled in one of the unused conference rooms. Matty doesn’t look at all surprised to see Steve grab a cup of water from the jug in the corner and start tossing it around.  _ Who told her all of this so fast? Probably Cage. _ Matty shuts the door and turns to all of them. 

Matty looks shaken. The kind of shaken Riley has only seen a handful of times since meeting the woman.

“What’s wrong?” Jack asks.

“Remember that dossier that I left for Mac?”

“Yes…”

“I left it because it was in James’s file. I thought it might be a contact, someone he knew…”

“And?”

“It looks like Mac went to the Shoah foundation to see if they could track him down. A woman from there called me today, because she couldn’t get hold of Mac but she knew he worked at Phoenix. They found the man. His name is Erik Lensherr. And he’s one of the mutants.”

“How do you-” Steve asks, and looks a bit offended when Matty cuts him off. Danny, Riley can see out of the corner of her eye, is smirking.

“He was part of a secret Nazi experiment. Hence the massively redacted dossier. When James found him, he used Lensherr’s blood as the basis for his KX7 serum. He admitted as much when I confronted him with what I knew. Which was that Lensherr was removed from the main camp, listed as an experimental subject, and then disappeared in a break-out that left four guards dead with their helmets crushed. The metal had been warped.”

“So another mutant. We found two in the past day.” Jack shrugs.

“Not just  _ another mutant, _ Jack.” Matty says, and the sharpness in her voice doesn’t permit arguing. “He’s rumored to be behind the most powerful mutant movement in the world. One that now is beginning to operate openly. Lensherr, or Magento as his followers call him, wants his Brotherhood to tear down every institution, everyone, who’s ever hurt mutants and make the world treat them as equals.”  _ Just like Patty. _ “And he’s willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen.” She holds out her tablet. “His people have been recruiting. And five minutes ago, this popped up.” There’s a video of an old, grey-haired man who looks like he should be a kindly wizard, not a vengeful warrior, shouting to a crowd of literally all colors, shapes, and sizes. Steve lets the water in his hand fall to the floor as the angry, warmongering yells continue. But it’s not the leader that draws Riley’s gasp. It’s the woman standing next to him, with long black hair and a scarred face.  _ Patty just allied herself with the most dangerous mutant in the world. How do we even stand a chance? _


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it took me forever to update this one...I had MAJOR writer's block on this chapter, and thanks to some awesome help from my beta KatieComma, I finally managed to get through it. Fortunately I have the next few chapters planned out and partially drafted, so it shouldn't take me quite as long to get to them.

On the way back to the War Room, Riley can’t stop wondering how they’re going to break this to Mac; Patty’s got another super-powered mega villain by her side.

When they get back to the room, Zoe is sitting on the floor, with Mac holding her hands, rubbing his thumbs over the backs of her wrists as she shakes violently, eyes blank and rolled back in her head. When he hears the others at the door, he looks up, and his eyes are wide with panic. “She started shaking, and she can’t stop, and I don’t know what’s happening!” His own hands are trembling in Zoe’s. “Please, help her.”

Cage pushes through, resting her hands against Zoe’s temples. “She’s being taken over by another telepath,” Cage whispers through gritted teeth. “I have to force him out.” Cage goes rigid, her body stiff, eyes closed. 

Riley’s seen a lot of fights, but she’s never seen anything like this. Not this silent battle of wills. She can tell there are points when Cage gets back some control, because Zoe’s eyes clear a little and a bit of a strangled scream comes from her wide-open mouth, but then the blankness is back. Cage’s nose is dripping blood onto the carpet; her own body is shaking.

And then both the women suddenly slump down, Zoe falling backward against a chair, Cage rocking back to her heels on the floor. Sam’s hands are still shaking, and her breath is hitching violently. She looks up at Mac, who’s still holding Zoe, one hand gripping hers while the other tangles in her hair. “I didn’t beat him. He got what he wanted and let go.”

“I’m sorry,” Zoe whispers. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“What’s going on?” Riley asks.

Cage answers for her, wiping the blood away from her nose. “Patty’s people tracked Zoe’s mind and they know where we are.” Cage glances from Mac to Jack to Matty, genuine fear glimmering in her eyes and her hands twisting in her scarf.  _ If Cage is worried, how bad is this going to get?  _  “They’ve seen the Phoenix.  Even if we’re gone by the time they arrive, they’ll tear this place apart to find us.”

“Then let’s give them what they want,” Mac whispers. “I’m not going to let someone else get hurt because of me. Not again.”

“What are you talking about?” Riley asks. 

“I’m going to meet with them. On my terms.”

“Well, you’re sure as hell not going alone,” Jack says sharply. 

“I’m going to try to reason with them. Convince them I won’t be fighting for them, but I don’t want to fight against them either. I don’t want it to come to blood,” Mac says quietly.

“I doubt people like that will be willing to listen,” Steve says. “Mac, we’ve found something more. Patty’s not just trying to recruit mutants. She’s joined up with the most dangerous mutant rights leader in the world. She’s got an army at her back now.”

Mac stiffens, gripping Zoe’s arm a little tighter.  _ He was willing to go face Patty and whatever ragtag band she conscripted. He’s not going to be able to deal with that army.  _

And then Cage glances up, toward the ceiling, a confused but resigned look on her face. “Someone’s coming.”

There’s a strange swishing sound from behind her, and Riley turns just in time to see a person standing behind her. Someone she’s only seen on blurry camera captures and once in the back of a van rigged to explode.  _ My God. The Ghost was a mutant too. _

The man’s body looks blurry, like he’s not altogether solid. And as she watches, he seems to blink out of existence before he suddenly appears in front of Mac, a hand on Zoe’s throat. 

Steve dives at him, but rolls right through the man’s body. It’s like the Ghost is somehow both there and not there, like he can make his body phase out of existence at will.  _ This is surreal. _ Riley’s pretty sure this is the eeriest mutation she’s seen yet. Jack’s pulled his gun, water is rolling around Steve’s hands, and Carlos seems to be drawing electricity from the lights. But they can’t attack the Ghost. Not at the risk of hurting Zoe.  _ He’ll just fade out, and she’ll be the one who gets shot or electrocuted. _

Zoe’s choking, gasping for air. “What do you want?” Mac practically screams at the man, trying to tear his grip away from Zoe’s neck with hands that are glowing red. She struggles, and at first Riley thinks it’s because she’s being choked, but then she sees the streaks of water running down the girl’s neck. Zoe’s losing control and transforming to ice, and Mac’s powers are hurting her.

“Mac! Stop!” Riley shouts. “She’s ice!” He pulls his hands back, staring at them in horror. And then there’s another soft swish sound and Zoe is gone. In her place, a note drifts to the floor. 

_ I can tell you care about the girl, so I’m giving you the chance to keep her safe. Meet us at noon, or the girl will die. _ There’s a set of coordinates scribbled below the words.

Riley knows this isn’t a game. This isn’t even some twisted, convoluted, overcomplicated plan.  _ It would have been easy for the Ghost to take Mac instead. But he never would have stopped fighting them.  _

“I’m going.” Mac stands up slowly, shaking, clutching the note so hard he’s crushed it into a tiny scrap. “I’m not going to leave her there to be hurt.”

“Mac, this is suicide,” Jack mutters softly. “You know what they want from you, and we both know you’ll never fight for them.”

“I can’t let her die!” Mac’s voice has risen to a broken sob. “I let her down once and I won’t do it again.” He glances from Jack to Matty. “You can’t make me stay here. You can’t stop me.” Riley watches the red glow swirl around his hands.  _ He’s right. None of us can force him to stay here against his will.  _ They don’t have a way to prevent him from using his powers, and Riley knows he could blast his way through the wall of any of their holding cells. 

“Well, we’re sure as hell not letting you go alone,” Jack inisists. “If you go, we all go.”

“Patty’s going to expect that,” Mac says quietly. 

“So what? She doesn’t come alone, you don’t come alone, we have a good brawl, get your girl back, and maybe take Patty down for good.” Steve smacks one hand into the other, a small spray of water flying. “Bring it on.”

“Ignore this maniac,” Danny mutters. “He’s just disappointed he can’t use his powers to fight people at his day job. Unless he willfully ignores the rules and almost gets himself caught.” He glares at Steve.

“Danny, he was on a speedboat. He was going to get away if we didn’t do something.”

“Three kids saw you. You could have gone subtle, but no, you had to make a twenty foot tower of water appear in front of the boat. It could have been one small wave.”

Steve shrugs, a sheepish look on his face. “Sometimes when I haven’t used my powers for a while they get a little out of hand.”

“Yeah, yeah, excuses. One of these days you’re gonna get caught and hauled off to who knows where and then what am I gonna do?” Danny smacks him. “So yeah, we can go help, but please for the love of God don’t do something stupid and get yourself killed.”

Mac sighs. “I don’t think it has to be a fight. Patty wants me, for some reason, more than she wants everyone else.”

“Doesn’t mean you can just hand yourself over to her,” Bozer says. “Mac, come on, you know something about this is sketchy. She’s not just gonna give Zoe back if you turn yourself in. She’s gonna keep her so she can force you to do what she wants.” Riley watches Mac’s face fall. She knows he knew that already, he was probably just trying to ignore it. 

“I can’t ask you all to-”

Jack cuts him off, grinning. “That’s the good part, bud. You know you don’t have to.”

* * *

Riley already doesn’t like the look of this place. Patty picked her spot well. Maybe she knew they had help from someone who controlled water. Either that or she just likes the dramatic effect of having the meeting at Death Valley.

Riley steps out of the car and immediately gasps. The dry, hot air feels like it’s leaching every bit of moisture out of her skin. Steve’s looking slightly shaky; he downed three bottles of water on the way here, but Riley can tell he’s not feeling his best.  _ I hope this goes quickly. _

Through the waves of heat already shimmering up from the ground, Riley can see several figures approaching them. She can’t make out who, exactly, they are, but she’s sure one of them is Patty. 

It looks like there are five of them, not counting Zoe, who must be the one who looks like they’re being dragged along. Riley glances around her. Mac, Cage, Steve, and Carlos are all great, but Riley has no idea who Patty’s come with.  _ What if one of them can fly? Or what if their powers cancel some of the others’ out? _ She and Jack and Danny and Boze might be great backup in a normal field op, but she’s sure they’ll be woefully outmatched against mutants.  _ All we can do is hit them, or shoot them. What if we’re attacked by someone who’s invulnerable to bullets? Or a telekinetic who can turn our own weapons against us? _

It’s not that they don’t have a plan. It’s just that their plan is sketchy at best and Cage and Zoe will have to be able to combine their powers. Depending on what shape Zoe’s in, they might not be able to do it.

Mac starts walking to meet Patty, and the others fall in beside him. Riley feels like shivering even in the intense heat.  _ There’s so much that can go wrong. _ Maybe none of them will walk away from this. But there’s no one she’d rather die with. 

Jack’s gripping his gun so hard his knuckles are white. Riley can’t imagine how worried he must be.  _ He’s got to be wondering if Mac will actually stick to the plan. _ Jack knows Mac better than Riley, so much better, but even Riley has seen firsthand Mac’s on the spot decisions. If he thinks this plan puts his team and his family in more danger than handing himself over would, he might change the game at the last second. 

Now Riley can see Patty and her backup more clearly. The Ghost, doubly hard to see because of his phase shifting and the heat shimmer, is walking beside Patty on her left side. On her right, there’s someone Riley hoped she’d never see again. Jonah Walsh, claws extended, nothing but feral rage in his face, snarls. Two more mutants are flanking them, a woman with what looks like a glowing blade, holding that against Zoe’s neck, and a tall young man with green skin and golden eyes. 

Cage slows, and Riley’s pretty sure she’s checking the ranks for the telepath she fought in Zoe’s mind. Against her leg, she extends two fingers.  _ All clear. He’s not here. _ And then Riley watches Zoe go stiff. Cage must have made contact. 

The plan is simple. Cage alone isn’t a strong enough telepath to pull it off, but with her and Zoe’s powers combined, they might be able to freeze everyone on Patty’s team. Cage has heard of it being done. Riley hopes it works.

So far, nothing’s happening. Patty steps forward, and the others fall in behind her, Walsh still snarling, fangs bared. He looks like a rabid dog, and Riley shudders.  _ I’m so glad that’s not what happened to Mac.  _ She wonders if Walsh was always this insane or if getting powers pushed him over the edge. 

“I didn’t think you’d come alone,” Patty says, and she doesn’t sound in any way upset, stressed, or even nervous. “I knew Jack would never let you.” She shrugs. “Not that your backup will do you any good. If they come one step closer, the girl dies.” 

Mac stiffens. “I promise, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.”

“I knew you would.” Patty smiles. “That’s what I’ve always loved about you, Mac, you put everyone else’s lives first. You always protected your team no matter what.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m still your agent. You betrayed us. You almost got us killed.” Mac snaps, and Riley can see red around his hands and chest. 

“Oh no. The people who betrayed you are the people who would force you to hide, to live in the shadows because of your powers. I want you, and everyone else like us, to be free.”

“So you reveal the project I was part of to the world and force me to run for my life?” Mac’s voice is heated, his powers even more so. Riley can smell scorched fabric. 

Patty looks like she’s going to make an angry retort, but she never gets the chance. Her mouth opens too slowly, and then it’s like time stands still.

Mac rushes to Zoe, pulling the other woman’s arm, which the glowing knife appears to actually be an extension of, away from her throat. Zoe falls forward, gasping, and then all hell breaks loose. 

Zoe must have accidentally severed the connection between her and Cage when she collapsed. Because suddenly everyone is moving again. There’s a brief moment of shock as Patty’s mutants seem to be trying to figure out why Mac is suddenly not in front of Patty, and then the woman with the weird knife swings it at Mac and Zoe. Mac pushes Zoe out of the way, then turns on the woman. There’s a brief swirling shimmer of red, and then the same whirling, uncontrolled disks of light flash out. The woman with the knife falls back with a scream. So does Zoe. 

Mac and Zoe should be running back to the others, but Zoe’s clutching her leg and Mac looks like he’s in shock. He’s kneeling down next to her, totally oblivious to Walsh and Patty moving toward him. Riley can’t hear what he’s saying but he’s reaching for her leg, tearing pieces of his shirt to wrap it, and she can tell his hands are shaking. 

Everything still seems like it’s happening in slow motion. Riley sees Jack firing at Walsh as the man takes a swipe at Mac with his claws. At least one of the shots manages to get the monster’s attention, and he turns toward Jack, growling. The green man leaps into the air shockingly high and lands on  _ top _ of Jack, hissing and grabbing at his throat.

Cage is facing off with the Ghost. It appears her power is the only one that stands a chance of stopping him. He keeps phasing in and out, but it looks like he’s locked in place. Sam is shaking, blood dripping from her nose again. 

Riley hears a snarl and looks up to see Walsh charging her. Jack, grappling with the green man, isn’t going to be able to help her. Riley does the only thing she can think of, swinging her backpack, heavy with her rig, into the man-monster’s face. 

But it doesn’t really slow him down, there’s only more anger in his eyes. Riley leaps backward, almost colliding with Bozer, who’s drawing his own gun. But she’s seen Walsh shake off those shots like it’s nothing.  _ We’re going to die.  _

Walsh’s claws rake toward Riley, and she braces herself for the pain. But there’s nothing, only a sudden spray of strange coolness on her face, like rain. She opens her eyes to see a shimmering wall of water in front of her. Steve’s standing beside her, panting with exertion, sweat rolling down his face. 

“Go! Get out! I can’t hold this much longer!” Riley can see that the water’s already dissipating in the heat. It’s holding Walsh back for now, but it won’t for much longer. Riley runs, but when she hears a horrible growl she looks back

Walsh’s claws slash through the weakened shield of water and bury themselves in Steve’s side. For a long moment, it feels like there’s no sound left in the world. Steve is silent, staring. And then Walsh roars again, Steve tumbles to the dirt, and the water spills around him, mixing with the blood, both steaming against the scorching stones and dust.

“No!” Danny throws himself at Walsh, emptying his clip into the monster’s chest and the arm Walsh raised to protect his head. He’s only stopped by Carlos, who grabs him and practically flings him back toward Riley and Bozer. 

“You’re no good if you get killed!” Carlos yells. Riley glances toward Jack, who’s apparently beaten the green guy, and is now at Mac’s side, picking up Zoe while Mac tries to fend off Patty and the knife girl with small, controlled blasts of energy. But it’s clear he’s struggling. Riley can tell because his aim is off and half the time the light around his hands is flickering madly, out of control.  _ We have to end this before he loses it completely, or none of us are going to walk away.  _ Riley feels guilty for thinking that way about Mac, but it’s the truth. And then Jack’s running toward them, Carlos is forcing Walsh back with a whirling cloud of sand, long enough for him and Danny to run in and drag Steve to safety, and Cage falls to her knees, gasping.  _ We can’t hold them.  _

“Everyone get back! Get back!” Carlos yells, and raises his hands. The clouds spark and crackle overhead, and lightning slams down, sending Patty, the knife girl, and the Ghost flying. At the same time, a hot wind whips up, a hundred times stronger than the tiny dust storm Carlos was using on Walsh, and there’s almost an instant wall rising from the desert floor. 

Cage shoves Riley toward the cars. “We have to go! Now! I’m barely holding the Ghost off as it is! We have to get away now.” Her face is strained, eyes bloodshot and glassy.  _ It’s absolutely unfair that they have a teleporter we can’t outrun if he comes for us.  _

Riley takes one vehicle, Jack takes the other. Bozer jumps in the passenger seat of Riley’s car, and Danny pulls Steve into the back. Carlos steps in with them, pulling bloodsoaked fabric away from the wounds on Steve’s side, assessing the damage. “Go! Go!” He yells, and Riley remembers that the man was an army medic.  _ He’s used to working on things like this in a moving vehicle, more than likely.  _ So she guns the engine and keeps her eyes on the car ahead. 

They don’t stop until they’re somewhere in Nevada. They’re close to Las Vegas, but the only text Riley got from Jack was letting her know they’d be stopping soon. Not even any joke about Vegas always being on the way to anywhere.  _ He’s rattled. We all are. _

For the moment, Carlos has Steve stable. Mutants have stronger bodies than humans, which is fortunate, but Steve’s going to need major medical attention soon anyway. Riley hopes Jack found some sort of clinic or vet office. They can’t just walk into a major hospital with a wounded mutant and expect things to go well.

When they pull over, Riley’s glad to see that they are indeed at some sort of urgent care facility. It’s still open, but when Cage walks in, everyone else starts walking out. She comes back to the door a few minutes later.

“They all think there’s some sort of toxic gas leak there now. Fortunately, they also all think someone else called authorities. They won’t remember a bit of it tomorrow.” Cage looks absolutely drained, her face pale, her hands shaking. They pull the cars around and unload Zoe and Steve, and the minute they’re all inside Cage goes to one of the empty rooms and collapses on the paper-covered exam table, falling asleep almost instantly. 

Riley feels like doing the same, but she still has to make sure no one is watching or tracking them. After she’s checked and rechecked that she controls cameras and any security systems, she sits down in one of the hard plastic chairs to wait. Carlos is working on Steve right now; Zoe’s leg wound was instantly cauterized so she’s not in nearly as much immediate danger.

Bozer sits down next to Riley. She doesn’t know what to do. Zoe’s asleep, Mac and Jack are talking, almost arguing, in the hall, and Danny’s refused to leave Steve’s side. Bozer sighs. 

“Are you hungry?” He asks, pulling a couple Snickers bars out of his jacket pocket. “There was a vending machine in the staff lounge.” Riley silently takes the candy from him. Her stomach is churning, but now that she thinks about it, she  _ is _ hungry. She hasn’t eaten since this morning, and she’s starting to get a headache.

After a few minutes, Mac and Jack sit down with her and Bozer. “You did good out there today, Ri,” Jack says, taking her hand and holding it. 

“Thank you.” Riley whispers. “It just doesn’t feel like it right now.”

She tries to get Mac’s attention, but Mac is staring at his hands, silent and brooding. There’s a whole jar of paperclips on the counter in the nurses’ office, and Riley stands up and grabs them, bringing them over. But even when she sets a few on his knee, Mac ignores them completely.  _ He blames himself. _ She’ll give him a little time, and then she’ll try and talk to him. Jack probably just gave him an unsuccessful lecture already. He’s not going to be in the mood for another one right away.

What feels like an hour later, Carlos steps out, wiping his hands on a towel, his shirt covered in blood. “McGarrett’s tough. He’s gonna be fine, provided he actually listens to me and takes it easy.”

“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen,” Jack says, a bit of a smile returning to his face.

“Oh I think if his partner has anything to say about it, Steve’s not going to be moving for at least a year.” Riley glances through the half-open door, she can see Danny leaning over Steve, probably giving the SEAL the lecture of his life. Although from the sound of things this is nowhere near the first time.  _ He sounds like Jack when one of us gets hurt. _

Carlos moves on to Zoe’s room. It takes him much less time, and when he comes back, the tenseness has gone out of his shoulders. “She’s got some second degree burns, a tiny bit of third degree in a small line, but it should all heal pretty cleanly. She’s just dehydrated and because she was partially in ice form, she’s got some extra cuts and abrasions where the heat damaged her.”

“You mean where I hurt her.” Mac’s voice is a sullen, self-deprecating mumble.

“Mac…” Riley begins, reaching to put a hand on his knee.

“Get away from me.” His voice is broken and shaky with tears. “Don’t touch me. Didn’t you see what I did?”

“She’s not dead, Mac. She’s gonna be okay.” Fire and ice just didn’t mix well, that’s all. “You were trying to protect her.”

“And I could have killed her!” Mac stands up, shaking. “It’s blind luck she only got hit in the leg. I have no control! I could have killed her, I could have killed any of you.” Riley sees tears streaming down his cheeks. There’s a fresh glow around his hands, and Carlos looks directly at it, a hint of fear crossing his face.  _ Please, no, don’t let him see that. _ But it’s clear that Mac does. He looks down at his hands and makes a quiet, choked cry, sinking back into his seat.  _ He can’t even get properly upset or emotional without having to worry about this. _

“Mac, it’s okay. We’re all okay. No one’s dead.” Riley sighs. “It’s been a long day. I think you should try and sleep, we’ll all feel a lot better in the morning.” 

Riley’s slept in her share of waiting rooms. It never gets more comfortable. She thought briefly about going to the cars and stretching out in a back seat, but the thought of being that far away from the rest of the team is unsettling. After everything she’s seen, she’d rather be close to the people who might be able to protect her. Although if the Ghost came for her, there would be no stopping him...her sleep is restless and full of nightmares of claws and nearly invisible hands, and fire that won’t stop chasing her. 

RIley blinks awake to the feeling of someone's hand frantically shaking her awake. It’s Jack, and he looks more scared than she’s seen him since Mac got sick when he first got his powers. 

“Jack, what’s wrong?” She’s instantly awake. 

“Mac’s gone.” He shudders. “And Cage can’t even track him. He’s disappeared.” 

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

Mac can’t forget the way Zoe collapsed when his out of control powers slammed into her. He’s trying to sleep in the stiff, cold waiting room chair, but he can’t get the sight of the girl crumpling to the ground, screaming in pain, because of  _ him, _ out of his head. 

He glances at Jack and Riley and Bozer and Carlos, all stretched out on chairs around him.  _ I could hurt any one of them. I could kill them. _ And he wouldn’t even mean to do it. He can’t control this power. He thought he could, but every time he’s angry, every time he’s afraid, his powers are ready to lash out.  _ I’m a ticking time bomb. I’m dangerous.  _ And there’s two things Mac has learned about bombs.

_ One. If you can, defuse it. _ But that’s not going to happen. Short of Mac waking up one morning with his powers vanished, they’re never going to have a way to truly control this. Bozer’s suit helped contain and focus the blast, but it didn’t stop the energy from building up, it didn’t stop it from lashing out.

_ Two. If you can’t defuse it, minimize casualties.  _ In most cases that means evacuating as many people as possible from a building, finding a way to contain the blast, keeping people clear of the area. But Mac knows this family will refuse to leave him.  _ They’d rather risk their lives than let me go. _ But someday this is going to happen again, and they might not be lucky enough to have everyone walk away. 

He needs to get away from them. From all of them. He doesn’t know how.  _ Cage can track me. How am I going to avoid that?  _ He’s not sure yet, but he’ll think of something. And anyway, he can be miles away by then. They don’t have a teleporter. 

He slips out a back door and hotwires a car he finds parked nearby. He’ll leave an apology with it wherever he drops it off. 

He drives blindly, none too sure where he’s headed, turning every time he gets closer to civilization.  _ Minimize casualties. Stay away from populated areas. _ By the time the sun comes up, a blaze of red and gold and orange against the desert sand, he has no idea where he is. The car runs out of gas about an hour later. He pulls it over onto the shoulder, gets out and walks. He’s glad that wherever he is, there are trees. It’s a bit of a scrubby forest, but where there are trees there’s water. He’s only just realizing how thirsty he is. 

He hears it before he sees it: asoft snuffling sound. And then an almost animal wail of pain. But there’s a human quality to it that Mac can’t ignore.

He plunges into the undergrowth, searching for the source of the sound.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” He should, by all rights, be afraid of whatever caused a person to make that kind of primal scream, but there’s not much that can hurt him anymore, and if they do, killing him might be for the best anyway.

“Please, help me!” It’s a woman’s voice, raspy and terrified. “They’re going to kill me!”

Mac doesn’t hesitate, he plunges through the trees into a small clearing. There’s someone there, someone in ragged jeans and a t-shirt, with long tangled black hair hiding half their face. 

“It’s okay, just tell me-” Mac’s shocked gasp cuts off his words when the woman turns toward him, hair falling back to reveal a twisted smile.  _ Harper Hayes?  _  He doesn’t have time to wonder what the hell is going on before the woman springs up from her crouching position and slams him backward into a tree. A set of three metal  _ claws _ slide out from her hand, angled over Mac’s throat. The message is very clear.

_ What the hell?  _ Mac’s never seen anything like this before.  _ No, she can’t be… _

He doesn’t want to kill her, but he has to get away. He lifts one hand and lets some of the panicked energy slam into her shoulder. She barely flinches, the charred, angry skin knitting itself back together almost instantaneously, pink and healthy under the new hole in her shirt.  _ She is a mutant. _

“Nice try, pyro. But it doesn’t work on me.” She grins, and her teeth look sharp. “My turn.” her claws flick over his chest, shredding his shirt, drawing blood, making the fire burn even hotter in his blood. 

“Don’t damage the goods yet, Hayes.” A new voice snaps, and Harper’s feral grin fades. 

“Of course, Colonel Trask.” She doesn’t retract her claws. 

Trask grins evilly. “Well, well. Look what fell into our trap.” Mac shudders at the cold fascination in his voice. “Didn’t think you could hide that easily, did you? My people track mutant activity. And that heat plume in Death Valley, it matched every other incident we’d mapped. Your heat signature isn’t too hard to trace. And everything they said about you was right. You care too much.”

He knows he could get away. He could. But he’d have to kill to do it, and he’s scared of what will happen if he lets himself.  _ They know I don’t want to hurt people.  _ He would do it, without hesitation, if they had Jack or Riley or Boze or anyone else, but it’s just him.  _ Maybe this is for the best. Maybe if they have me they’ll stop hunting everyone else.  _ He knows it’s a foolish thought, but for some reason they seem to want him more than the others.

And then there’s a needle in his neck and he can feel something running cold through his veins, dulling his power until he’s not sure he could fight back if he wanted to. The cold feeling creeps through his blood until he’s shivering. He can’t remember the last time he was cold. With the plasma burning through him, cold has become a foreign thing, especially at his core. He feels shaky and dizzy and when they pull him back to his feet and drag him into the helicopter he doesn’t fight. There’s no point in fighting. He can barely stand, let alone run away.  _ It doesn’t matter. As long as they get me away from anyone I can hurt. _

… 

“Little mutant freak.”

“Stay away from that one. He’s dangerous.”

Mac curls at the back of the cage,  _ a cage, like I’m some kind of animal _ , and tries to ignore the voices. He has no idea where the helicopter is going, only that it’s headed north. He can’t help the fear creeping in. He wants his family. That’s selfish and wrong but he wants them. He wants Jack to come get him out of here, Riley to tell him he’s not a monster, not a horrible mistake. He wants Sam and Bozer to be there and not look afraid of him whenever he moves. Even Steve with his calm reassurance that things get better, that Mac can learn to control this. He just wants  _ someone. _ But he can’t have them.

_ You’re dangerous. You’re a weapon. You’re a wild animal in a cage. You’re not allowed to want anything. _

He already knows Cage won’t be able to find him. When they slammed the door of the box they’ve shoved him into, he heard the low hum of something electrical powering up. He’s pretty sure telepaths actually are just able to sense various electromagnetic frequencies most humans can’t (there is a rational scientific explanation for all of this, there is) and that this thing was some kind of signal dampener. He’s pretty sure these guys aren’t with Patty, she definitely wouldn’t be working with the government, especially not the military. Not with the kind of rhetoric the group she’s with esposues.  _ Either these people know we have a telepath or they’re just taking precautions.  _ It hurts more than it should to know he’s on his own. 

He can barely see into the other cage in the cargo bay of the helicopter, with all the cracks spider webbing the glass. There’s a primal roar, and then a screech like nails on a chalkboard but a hundred times worse. The glass gains three new massive gashes across the door.  _ Harper. _ She sounds wilder, more animalistic, than before.  _ What have they done to her? _

Mac cringes instinctively when Colonel Trask walks up and crouches next to his cage. “It’s quite something to finally see you in the flesh, Angus. Or should I say, ‘Havok’.” Mac remembers Jack calling him that as a joke. Apparently someone else decided it fit too. “You proved pretty difficult to track down, but I’m sure it will be worth it.”

“I don’t know what you want, but you’re not getting it,” Mac growls.

“No one knows where you are.” Trask shrugs. “And no one cares. You’re not going to be missed. No family, and the only friends you have are in danger because of you. I’m sure they’ll be grateful that they never have to see you again.” Mac shivers. He’s told himself that, but he knows it’s not true. Jack and the rest of his little family would never, ever be glad he disappeared.  _ I shouldn’t have left. I just wanted to protect them, to try and settle things with Patty another way.  _

The helicopter sets down in a swirl of snow (so they’ve gone north, wherever they are) and Mac is dragged out. When the soldiers shove him to his knees on the ground he doesn’t drop quickly enough to satisfy them, and they follow up the shove to the backs of his knees with the butt of a gun in his stomach and a boot to his head. He dimly realises that the snow around him isn’t melting at his touch. His knees don’t melt the snow around them, and the flakes are settling on his shirt sleeves.

No one actually talks to  _ him. _ Trask talks to the soldiers holding him. The scientists (Mac assumes that’s what they are, they’re wearing green scrubs and lab coats) talk to each other as they draw samples of his blood. No one says a word to Mac. 

They poke and prod and shove and strip him like he’s a lab rat. Like he’s nothing. They drag him into a lab where he can only watch while they take blood and fill needles with things he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want anywhere near him. He doesn’t know how long it is before he passes out. 

When he wakes up, he’s alone in a small concrete room with only a small wall shelf of a bed, a rusted toilet and sink in a corner, and a small pile of grey clothes on the end of the bed shelf.  _ At least I feel a little like a human being with some shred of dignity left. _ That feeling fades when he notices the black ink numbers stamped on the shirt and pants.  _ Just another piece of government property. _ Remembering James’s threat to have his whole team arrested for ‘stealing’ him makes Mac shiver. 

There’s nothing to do in this room but think. They’ve given him more of whatever drug they used to shut down his powers, so there’s no way he’s going to be able to melt through the door or blow a hole in the wall. He might be able to cobble together something from the room, after all, this isn’t the first prison he’s been stuck in, but even if he did, he doesn’t know what he’d do once he got past his cell. He has no idea where he is inside this facility, and if he can’t find his way out he’ll probably get himself killed. And that’s the lesser of the evils that could be waiting.

...

After three days, he’s tempted to take the risk of dying in an escape attempt. If his brain wasn’t so foggy from all the drugs...Trask’s people have tried everything to make him actually use his power in a containment lab, and from the looks of things they intended to siphon it off and collect it somehow. Mac has no idea what they want with it, but it can’t be good. So he’s refusing to let them have even a glimpse of what he’s capable of.

He’s only come close to losing control a few times. They’ve beaten him nearly unconscious at least a dozen times, and when they snapped two ribs, his self-protection instincts,  _ which I do have, Jack, they just don’t show up very often, _ kicked in, and he made a few sparks and pretty well scorched his shirt before he managed to force the fear and pain back into a place they wouldn’t trigger any explosions. As it turns out his powers also aren’t fond of electrical shocks or waterboarding. There have been some near misses. But the only thing Trask and his minions have gotten from Mac is a few sparks.

He can tell Trask is getting frustrated. Mac can tell, because the soldiers don’t seem as concerned about damaging him anymore. He’s being beaten more often, for no reason at all, and they’ve stopped giving him food. As odd as it is, his cell becomes someplace he feels safe. No one pokes or prods or hurts him in there.

So when the door opens, he steels himself for yet another round of pain. It’s a shock when the person who steps inside slams the door closed behind them. It’s even more of a shock when Mac actually properly looks up at them. 

He looks the same as always, slicked back black hair, black leather trench coat, black gloves. “Murdoc,” Mac whispers, the icy fear in his blood running even colder than the drug still working its way out of his body.

The man smiles. 

“Oh, it’s good to see you again, MacGyver.” Murdoc smiles. “Well, well. Look how the tables have turned. Now you’re the one in the cage.” He pulls off his gloves theatrically and flourishes them in the air before putting them in a pocket. Mac can see something black on the back of his hand, some kind of mark, like a tattoo or a brand. He’s not sure what it is, but it definitely wasn’t there before. And it almost looks like it’s getting darker...

Mac tries to get to his feet, but the last time they had him they injected him with something and the world won’t stop spinning. He collapses back onto the shelf of a bed, shuddering, as the eerie psychopath walks over to him. 

Murdoc smiles and leans down, running his fingers through Mac’s hair. 

Mac tries to pull away, but everything  _ hurts _ and he can barely even manage a shiver of fear and disgust. There’s something horrible about the feeling of Murdoc’s hands. Something besides the awful eerie hunger in his eyes. Mac’s powers are actively rebelling against the touch, surging and burning under his skin. Murdoc must feel it too, because he steps back with a smile, pulling his hands away.

_ Is this how he steals powers? _

“Oh. It’s even better than I imagined,” Murdoc whispers. “So much raw power. So...vicious.” He smiles. “It’s not what I expected from someone as delicate as you. But oh, I like it. I wonder, is it all that anger you’ve hidden away? The only time I saw anything like this was the day I asked about your father, and you practically jumped across the table to strangle me.” 

“So what makes you think I won’t kill you now?” Mac pants, struggling to sit up. 

“Oh, I think you’ll try. Once the drugs they’ve given you wear off. But I don’t think you’ll succeed. I’ve always known there was something different about you, Angus. I’ve always felt it.” Murdoc laughs. “And now we see each other for what we are.”

“You’re working with them?” Mac snarls, although it sounds more like a gasp. 

“Well, you see, Mr. Trask appreciates my gifts, unlike most. When I found out you were captured, I came to him; I’d heard he was having some...trouble. He offered me sizable compensation for helping him extract mutants’ powers; specifically yours. And he somehow thinks I’m going to cooperate when he asks me to transfer those powers into the weapon he’s building. But by then I’ll have what I want and it will be too late for him.”

“What do you want?” Mac whispers, although he’s already sure he knows the answer.

“You.” Murdoc smiles again, his fingers tugging at the scorched, shredded remains of Mac’s shirt. “You see, there’s a small technicality that means you, and your powers, and your body, belong to the United States government. So you belong to Trask. And now, Angus, you belong to  _ me. _ ” 

If there was anything in his stomach, Mac would be throwing up. But there isn’t; he hasn’t been fed in...days now? The dry heaving only makes his battered ribs ache more. He can feel tears stinging his eyes, from the pain, but also, if he’s being honest with himself, from fear. 

“Has anyone ever told you you’re absolutely exquisite when you’re afraid?” Murdoc reaches for his cheek and pulls Mac’s head up so he’s forced to face him. “You have such expressive eyes.” 

Mac feels the faint shivering turn into a panicked tremor racing through his whole body.  _ They own me. _ The thought has never been so terrifying.  _ It was one thing to be their lab rat. _ It’s honestly not the first time something similar has happened to Mac. Maybe not on the same scale, but he’s been subjected to several crazed scientists’ projects in the line of duty.  _ But to be Murdoc’s plaything… _ He was terrified when Murdoc captured him months ago and held him captive, but even then he was still a free person. Still a human being, with rights. Now, Murdoc can do whatever he wants and it will be legal. 

“Oh, now, there’s no need to look so distressed,” Murdoc says, rubbing a hand over Mac’s arm and shoulder in a way that coming from anyone else would be soothing. “This can be as easy as you make it. You just have to surrender.”

“Never,” Mac bites out. 

“Oh good. I was hoping you’d say that. You see, I’d feel just a little guilty if I didn’t give you a choice. But as long as you insist…” He rubs his hands together gleefully. “Oh Angus, this will be fun. Well, maybe not for you. But that doesn’t really matter, now does it?” He twines his fingers into Mac’s hair. “You don’t matter anymore.” There’s such a vicious joy in his smile. “No one cares what happens to you.”

“My friends do.” But it’s a hollow feeling.  _ They haven’t come for me. Maybe they decided they’re lucky to be rid of a problem.  _

“Oh, them. They don’t matter anymore. They’ll never be able to save you. And even if they do, it will be too late.” Murdoc leans in, whispering. “When I’m done with you, no one else will want you. Not Trask, not Dalton, not any of your precious team. I will be the only person in the world who cares whether you live or die.” 

Mac can feel himself losing control. There’s too much, and he’s burning up from the inside out.  _ I already know it probably won’t get me out. But maybe it will get rid of him. _

The red fire surges out. Murdoc just stands there, watching.  _ What the hell is going on? _ And then the man reaches out a hand and catches a ring of energy in it. The sparks crackle and dissipate and red lines of fire snake up his arm, then up the side of his face, until his eyes blaze crimson. And then he laughs.

“Oh Angus. You really don’t understand what my power is at all, do you?”

The mark on the back of Murdoc’s hand begins to glow, and Mac sees something like a faint spark of light leaping from it to the still glowing rings around Mac’s own body. And then the pain hits.

It’s like nothing Mac’s ever felt in his life. He feels like his whole body is being ripped apart from the inside. Even getting his power didn’t feel like this.  _ Well, maybe it did but I was delirious from a fever at the time so I don’t actually remember. _

It’s like he can  _ feel _ the tearing as his power tries to hold onto his cells and instead is dragged out. Like he can feel the added gene being ripped back out of his DNA. He thinks he might be screaming or sobbing or both, but he can’t tell because all he can feel is the pain.

And then it’s over. He’s lying on the ground, surrounded by the ash that’s all that remains of his clothing, and the fire is just...gone. 

Murdoc is panting. “Test 107.65. Partial success.” He walks over at an infuriatingly leisurely pace, then crouches beside Mac. “You’re much stronger than I thought, Angus. Oh, this is going to be so much fun.” Murdoc smiles. “And once I’ve torn your powers away, you’ll be at my mercy. Oh, we’re going to have so much fun.” He trails his finger through the soot and ash on Mac’s body. “Such a lovely broken thing.” 

Mac whimpers. “Leave me alone,” he hisses, but his voice is shaking and it’s more of a pathetic whisper than an angry demand. 

“Oh, not that I don’t want to see you beg, but Angus, don’t you remember? You’re mine.” Murdoc’s voice carries a scolding sting. “You don’t get to ask for anything. I decide when this is over. And it’s not.” His hand skims Mac’s bruised, dirty chest. 

He’s drawing Mac’s power just enough to make it hurt. He’s no longer ripping it out completely, but he’s straining it, forcing the heat and fire to cling to his muscles and veins and bones with what feels like a thousand tiny barbs. He can’t stop the tears coursing down his cheeks, cutting through the soot and ash. By the time they splash to the floor they’re stained black. 

Murdoc laughs. “Oh, this is even better than I imagined.” He leans down close to Mac’s face. “You can’t possibly know how long I’ve dreamed of seeing you helpless in my hands while I took what I wanted.” Mac shivers. “But I never imagined you could give me  _ so much _ .” 

He rips his hand away, tearing away another shred of Mac’s powers with it. Mac can see, through a haze of tears, the red sparks flickering in the man’s fingers, and he sobs harder.  _ That’s mine. You have no right.  _  Maybe Murdoc hasn’t done anything else; but this is already the most horribly intimate violation Mac can imagine.  _ He’s stealing my power. And he’s going to use it to hurt people.  _ He’s not naive enough to imagine Murdoc won’t do exactly that. _ Whatever else he wants to do to me, it can’t be much worse. _

Murdoc stands up with a sigh. “Ah well, too much of a good thing will spoil it, I suppose. And you’re not leaving anytime soon. Rest assured, I’ll be back. And once I have your powers in my hands, the real fun can begin.” 

Mac curls on the floor, alternately freezing cold and burning up, and tries to ignore the pain. It’s like his powers themselves are wounded, torn and bleeding and trying to heal. But part of them is missing altogether. It hurts, and it feels wrong and terrible. Like what he imagines losing a limb would feel like. 

Up until now, Mac’s secretly wished to wake up and find that his powers have vanished. He’s hated and feared them for so long.  _ They were only ever destructive. I should want them gone. I should be happy. _ But instead it feels like having a piece of his soul ripped out.  _ They’re part of me now. Steve was right. _ He didn’t realize how desperately he wants to keep them until he’s about to lose them forever. 

Murdoc is going to take everything from him. Mac begins to sob, feeling the ragged edges of his power trying to stitch themselves back together but failing.  _ What if they never recover? What if this never gets better?  _ He wonders what it will feel like when they’re totally gone. Will it still hurt? Or will it be like they’ve never existed? He doesn’t like the idea of either option.  _ Murdoc is going to rip away everything I have and leave me with nothing. Broken. _ He lays there and cries for what he’s about to lose.  _ I don’t want this to happen,. But I can’t stop it. _ His whole body aches and burns, and his heart feels like it’s torn open and bleeding. 

_ Please. Please don’t do this to me. Please. _


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know, it's been FOREVER since the last chapter...the holidays REALLY messed up my posting schedule, and a couple other wild plot bunnies attacked me...but I WILL be finishing this story! Not sure how long that's going to take...but it will get done.

When Jack wakes up, and Mac is gone, he can’t stop the icy spike of fear that runs down his spine.  _ No, no, no. _ He jumps up, ignoring how stiff and sore he is after sleeping on the hospital chairs, and tries to walk as calmly as he can down the hallway.  _ Maybe he went to check on Zoe.  _

He tries not to rush down the hall, but he can’t help the nervous energy drumming through his chest. Danny’s fallen asleep leaning on Steve’s bed, and for a moment Jack really hopes he’ll find Mac doing the same in Zoe’s room. But when he pushes open the door, the mutant girl is sleeping peacefully but alone. 

Jack walks as fast as he can through the whole clinic, feeling a headache mounting behind his eyes.  _ Kid, you better not have done the exact stupid thing I think you did! _ Mac was frantic yesterday. Afraid of his powers, devastated that he hurt Zoe.  _ Mac was afraid he was going to hurt us. And knowing him, the only way he was going to feel like he was protecting us was to stay away from us entirely. _ Jack’s known since he woke up. No, really, he’s known since last night. Since Mac screamed at them to stay away from him.

_ He knew we never would. That we’d take any risk to protect him. So he didn’t give us a choice. _

And then Jack remembers that Mac isn’t as lost as he might think.  _ We have a literal mind reader. She found mutants halfway across the globe. She can definitely find Mac.  _

When he turns around, Cage is right there.  _ It’s not any less weird even though I know how she always did that now.  _ “I can’t feel him. I can’t feel him at all.” Cage stares at Jack with wide, distraught eyes.

Jack doesn’t even bother to tell her it’s creepy that she just read his mind and answered his unspoken question; she probably already knows anyway. “What does that mean?”

“Either he’s being held somewhere designed to block telepaths...or he’s dead.” She shudders. 

“He’s not dead. I would know if he was dead.” Jack may not be a telepath, but he’s always had a real good sense of when Mac’s in danger. And right now it’s screaming at him to go find the kid. Which means somewhere out there, Mac is alive and in danger.

“I-I’m not sure if it was real or a dream,” Cage says hesitantly, “but I-I saw him this morning. It’s what woke me up. He was alone in a forest, and then...Harper Hayes was there.”

“Harper Hayes? From the Bermuda Triangle?” Jack asks. “What the hell? She was supposed to be locked up.”

“She’s a mutant,” Cage says matter-of-factly. “It looks like she’s working for the government now. There was a soldier with her, and it seemed like she was following his orders.”

Jack wonders if she made a deal; to get out of prison. Or if she was forced into it against her will. Mutants don’t seem to get much say in what happens to them. James claimed Mac was government property...he would have said the Phoenix owned him...government property...Jack’s got an idea.  

“Do you think someone might have been using her to capture Mac? To do the same thing with him? His powers are dangerous, he’d be the perfect weapon.”

“It’s more than possible. From the looks of it, Harper lured him into a trap.” Cage shakes her head. More than that I don’t know. I woke up nearly screaming.” 

Jack shivers. Mac is in the hands of monsters, monsters who use mutants as soldiers. Whether Harper’s cooperation was voluntary or not, whoever has her is probably exploiting mutants and their powers. 

When he wakes Riley and explains, she goes absolutely white. Bozer looks vaguely sick, Carlos and Zoe look frightened, and both Danny and Steve look ready to tear someone apart bare-handed. Jack feels the same way. If he had someone to blame…

But he thinks he might know where to start.  _ Mutants were being hunted by the government. And the Phoenix was involved, when James was Oversight.  _ Now that position, and the contacts and information that go with it, belong to Matty. 

When Jack calls and tells her that Mac’s been taken, it sounds suspiciously like Matty might be close to crying. Jack explains everything that happened, and when Matty says she’ll look into it, Jack knows what that really means is that she’ll turn the world upside down, not stopping until she finds the information they’re after. 

… 

Jack Dalton has never been a patient man. He knows,  _ knows, _ that for Matty to get any information at all, there is red tape and deals to be made and favors to be called in. But as hours turn to days, and the days turn to a week, Jack becomes more and more frustrated. 

He and the others left the clinic before anyone else found them. Steve and Zoe are healing, far more rapidly than Jack’s seen anyone recover before. He doesn’t remember Steve healing this fast on ops.

When Jack brings it up, Steve shrugs. “I had to keep being mutant a secret. Sometimes that meant reopening old wounds.” Jack cringes at the thought. 

They’ve kept moving, like before, never staying in one place very long, crashing in a series of crappy motels. Riley’s been searching the dark web nonstop for anything that resembles a clue to what happened to Mac, but there’s nothing. She’s even hacked the CIA, NSA, and the Pentagon. There’s nothing. If something is being done to mutants under government supervision, it’s happening quietly, under the table.

And then Matty calls. When Jack sees her number on the phone, he’s torn between hope and fear.  _ What if she tells us something terrible happened? _

He answers with a shaky voice that is laced with tears. “Matty?”

“He’s alive.” That’s the first thing Matty knows he needs to hear. But he really knew already, because if Mac was dead he’d feel it; he’d just collapse in the middle of the room, unable to move, unable to breathe. His heart would just stop beating then and there, because  _ Mac  _ is his heart. 

“He’s at Alkali Lake,” Matty says quietly. And the way she says it, Jack knows it’s bad. “They won’t tell me any more. I had to burn a lot of bridges to get that much. It’s in Canada.” She sighs. “There’s nothing I can legally do. Mac is, technically, the property of the United States government.” Jack feels absolutely sick. “I’ve tried every legal loophole and some less than legal ones.” She sounds  _ scared. _ Jack can understand why. Matty is used to being able to get what she wants, when she wants. To being able to solve any problem, get her team out of any mess. “Jack, I’m not legally allowed to tell you more. But if Riley goes digging for a Project Sentinel...she might find the answers you need.”  

Jack hangs up and turns to the team. “Matty got a lead. She said she found out Mac’s being held at some place called Alkali Lake.” 

Steve clenches his fist, and Jack hears a pipe in the bathroom burst. But the water ruining the tile is the least of his concerns. “Steve? What is it?”

Steve only shakes his head. “Alkali Lake is where they threatened to send mutants who didn’t get with the program.” 

Jack shudders. 

“A couple guys said it didn’t exist. But then people who didn’t pass the tests, or who couldn’t control their powers...they just...disappeared. And no one joked anymore.” 

Jack joins Riley where she’s sitting on the end of a sketchy-looking bed in the shabby motel room tof the night. “Matty said to look for a “Project Sentinel”, whatever that is.”

“I think I saw that when I hacked the Pentagon files. It was classed as a weapons development program, but there was nothing about mutants. I scanned the files for keyword. I can take another look.”

“Maybe it’s another project that used Alkali Lake as a base. Maybe it’s Matty’s way of telling us where we can find blueprints.” 

It seems like it takes far too long for Riley to find and crack the file. When she does, her face goes absolutely white. A fraction of a second later, Jack sees both Zoe and Cage flinch. “Ri? What is it?”

Riley doesn’t answer. She simply turns her computer screen to show everyone in the room what she’s found. The schematics for a massive robot.  _ This is never good. _ And the plasma beams the schematic shows shooting out of the thing’s hands look an awful lot like Mac’s powers...

“This is the design specs for a next generation weapon, intended to be powered by mutants’ abilities. I couldn’t find it because they’re not calling them ‘mutants’. They’re calling them the ‘affected’.” 

“Nice trick to hide behind,” Cage mutters. 

“It seems that someone named Bolivar Trask was trying to set up a mutant division in the Army, under the command of a Colonel William Stryker. But apparently the mutants proved too hard to keep in line, and the government started looking for a more...cooperative solution. Which is when Trask designed these. Robots that could be totally controlled by the military, but that took advantage of the mutants’ capabilities.”

“But...how would they draw off mutants’ powers to get them into these things?” Danny asks. “Because as far as I know, they don’t transfer. Or Steve was lying to me this whole time.”

“Powers don’t normally transfer. But certain mutants have the ability to absorb others’ powers,” Cage says. “The one you called Murdoc could. If Trask and Stryker figured out a way to replicate that, they could theoretically put powers into a vessel like one of those robots. It would be complicated, but not impossible.” 

“So, this is all fascinating, but how is it going to help us  _ find Mac _ ?” Jack knows he shouldn’t snap at the others but it’s been a hell of a long week and he’s tired of running, tired of lying awake worried about the kid, tired of all of this. 

Thankfully Riley doesn’t look too hurt. “There’s more than schematics for robots here. There’s also a layout of the Alkali Lake compound.” She pulls up several blueprints and other documents. 

Steve takes one look and shakes his head. “That place is a fortress. We can’t just go charging in there. We need a plan.”

… 

In the end, Jack can’t blame Carlos and Zoe for not joining them. Carlos is having more trouble controlling his powers than ever, and Zoe’s a civilian. Neither of them wanted to get dragged into a war. There’s every likelihood that no one is coming back from this. And if mutants get caught in that place, they’ll...well, Jack doesn’t want to think about what will happen to them, because that’s what’s happening to Mac right now. 

It’s not too difficult for Cage to arrange an “accident” with the base commander’s car on his way home. Or for her to slip the idea into his head that the base needs to be cleared of all non-essential personnel for a radon sweep while she’s apologizing for denting his car. 

Alkali Lake’s systems are old. But Jack’s always believed Riley can hack anything, and she proves him right once again, getting him, Steve, Danny, and Cage through the front doors without alerting the few guards left on duty. Bozer stays behind with Riley, the two of them making sure the exit stays clear. 

“I don’t like this,” Sam says as they sneak down corridors. “This whole place is designed with telepath shielding in mind. Electromagnetic fields all over the place. I won’t know if we run into trouble until they’re right on top of us.” She shivers. “I don’t like it at all.”

Jack figures not being able to use her powers would be comparable to him suddenly not being able to see.  _ Yeah, I’d freak out too. If you’re used to being able to see danger coming well before it’s a problem... _

“We’re not splitting up,” Jack mutters. Cage gives him a nod, she remembers the Bermuda Triangle all too well. And if she was right about what she saw right before Mac disappeared, then they just might run into Harper Hayes around here. Jack’s none too excited by that possibility. 

Unfortunately, that plan goes out the window when they head down to the level Riley thinks Mutant Holding must be on, given the schematics she found, and run into a crew doing that fake radon sweep Cage set up. Before they can put the group out of commission, someone calls for help. 

“Go,” Steve says sharply. “We’ll hold them.”

Jack knows the chances of Steve and Danny succeeding are minimal. He also knows Steve would never back down from something like this. 

But there’s more than one way to enter this level, and when Jack and Sam round a corner and see another group of guards closing in, Jack’s pretty sure they’ve had it. And then all the soldiers stop, as if frozen. He glances beside him to see Cage, hands clenched, body tense. 

Her voice echoes in his head. _ Go. I can’t stop them forever. _ He didn’t know she could do this without Zoe’s help. But they don’t have a choice.

He’s hyper-alert as he continues through the building, clearing every corner with his heart in his throat. When he reaches a door that seems to be glowing with a pale green light inside, he cringes. But he has to go through here to get to the holding rooms. To get to Mac.

He uses the fake keycard Riley created from the one Cage swiped off the facility commander and opens the door. What’s on the other side is something he never thought he’d see outside of a horror movie.

Jack almost vomits. This place is some sicko Frankenstein lab. There are tables and vials and all sorts of horrible looking equipment that looks like a macabre mashup of medical instruments and torture devices. And in the middle of the room, suspended above a tank of greenish fluid, is a body.

For a moment, Jack thinks it’s Mac. Then he sees the long dark hair that’s hanging down, brushing the water. He edges a little closer. It’s Harper Hayes. Or what’s left of her.

Jack thought the woman looked like a walking nightmare on that island. But now...she’s hooked up to half of the eerie equipment Jack’s been walking past, and there are all kinds of ugly wires running directly  _ into  _ her body. She’s breathing, but raspily, and her cuffed hands are twitching restlessly. 

Jack’s about to walk past, when the woman’s eyes fly open and she emits a rabid growl. He nearly drops his gun in shock. 

Jack sees something horribly feral in her eyes.  _ That’s what Walsh looked like. _ But all those wires and tubes and instruments...no one, not even someone like this, deserves this kind of torture.

He carefully picks the lock on her left cuff.  _ Yeah, she might kill me. But she also might be mad enough to go after the people who did this to her. Might buy me some more time. If I get out of the way first. _ He can hear boots clumping down the hall.  _ If I’m not the easiest target... _

Her suddenly free hand slams out, shoves Jack backward, and then flails, ripping several of the tubes out of her body. Then a set of giant metal claws shoot out from her knuckles and slice right through the titanium cuffs like they’re nothing.  _ That’s new. _

She howls, ripping free of the wires and tubes with sickening disregard for the raw wounds it’s leaving all over her. 

Jack can’t believe it. Her bleeding gashes are healing right in front of him. He recovers his wits and dodges behind a row of lab tables just in time. Harper leaps up, then sniffs the air like a dog.  _ She’s going to kill me. _ And then the door bursts open, two of the guards start shouting, and Harper spins toward them with feline grace. Jack doesn’t stick around to watch. He bolts for the other door, shoves it open, and slams it behind him.

He’s in the holding room hall now. He glances around, unsure where to go from here.  _ Mac could be in any one of these rooms. _ Jack walks along the hall, glancing in through the tiny mesh-covered slits that function as windows. They’re all empty. He chokes back another round of bile at the sight of blood on some of the walls.  _ This is horrifying. _ It’s like something out of a movie.

Two doors from the end of the hall, Jack stops. It’s more an intuition than anything. He glances through the slit in the door and he wants to cry at the sight of his kid lying on a narrow shelf of a bunk.

Mac looks terrible. He’s pale and still, gasping for every breath. He’s covered in ash and soot and gashes and bruises.  _ What have they been doing to him in here? They’re treating him like he’s not even...human. _

The doors are keypad locked. And Jack doesn’t know the code. He doesn’t even have Riley to hack it. _ These locks are the sort that, if you sabotage them, go into a heavy lockdown. They’ll slam bars into place and make the door impossible to get through. _ He needs to find another way. He experimentally rattles the door handle, and the sound wakes Mac. 

The kid instinctively huddles into himself, arms tucked to protect his head. 

“Mac!” Jack calls softly. “Mac, it’s me, it’s Jack.” He tries to keep all the anger and fear and horror out of his voice.  _ Mac is terrified of what happens every time this door opens.  _

Mac looks up, and his eyes widen in disbelief. “Jack? It’s r-really you?”

“Yeah, bud, it is.”

“You shouldn’t be here. You sh-shouldn’t have c-come.” Mac scrambles to his feet, swaying and leaning heavily on the wall. “You have to go.”

“Not without you. You go kaboom, I go kaboom, remember?”

“T-technically I c-can’t die from b-being blown up n-now.” Trust Mac to crack a dumb joke even when he’s in the middle of an awful situation.  _ Kid’s brain never shuts off, does it? _ And then it strikes Jack that the kid’s  _ shivering. _

If it were anyone else, he wouldn’t be at all shocked.  _ He’s _ cold in this damp, dark concrete box, and he’s got full tac gear.  _ But Mac’s a walking furnace. It shouldn’t matter if he’s got warm clothes or not, he should be fine. _ Maybe he’s just shaking from pain...not that that’s good either. 

There’s a loud crash and a scream from the lab room, and Jack flinches.  _ We gotta get out of here soon.  _ This is turning into a disaster. He glances down the hall.  _ Mac would figure out a way to get this door open. I just gotta think like him. _ He spots a janitor closet at the end of the hall.  _ That’s a start. _

“Okay, bud, I’m gonna get you outta here, okay?” He puts his hand up to the window, then steps back. 

“Jack! Don’t leave!” Mac cries. He sounds like he’s close to sobbing.

“I’m not leavin’ for good. I just gotta find a way to get you out.”

He’s almost to the closet when the door to the lab room flies open, torn half off its hinges. Harper, her tank top and arms soaked in blood, mouth twisted in a fanged grin, growls at him. Jack glances from her, back to Mac’s door. She snarls again. 

“Hey, remember me? I let you out? Please don’t kill me.” He holds his hands up in a placating gesture, the way he would have if he ran into a coyote on a stock check back home. He’s had more than a few close encounters with wild animals, and right now Hayes seems more animal than human. 

She moves toward him, deliberate, light on her feet, claws out. He’s a dead man. There’s nothing human in those eyes. Nothing he can reason with. Just a wounded animal who wants someone to hurt for the pain they’ve put her through. And it doesn’t matter that Jack isn’t one of the ones responsible.

And then she stops, cocks her head, and sniffs.  _ She probably remembers me. From the Bermuda Triangle. _ Not that that’s going to do him any good. He shot at her. She shot him.  _ Yeah. I’m dead. _ Harper walks closer, so close that if she reached out, those blades in her hand could slit his throat. She stares at him for a long minute, ane the overwhelming smell of blood is unsettling. And then she walks past him, toward the stairwell door at the end of the hall, the one marked as an emergency exit route. He wonders if it’s a game. If she’s playing with her food, like a cat. If she’ll turn around and gut him the second he lets his guard down. 

_ I don’t know if she wants to kill me or not. But I have to get him out. _

He deliberately turns his back on Harper and opens the closet door. There’s no stabbing pain, and he forces himself not to think about what the woman might be planning, and looks around the closet.  _ You’ve spent years with Mac. You can figure out something to blow that door off its hinges. _ He starts talking himself through it, listening to the Mac voice in his head.  _ Please just don’t let me blow myself up. _ He grabs what he thinks is the right stuff and hurries back to Mac’s door. 

He hears an angry shout. “Damnit!” Someone yells, and a door slams. There’s an awful metallic screech that makes Jack cringe. He glances back around the corner and sees Hayes standing in front of the exit door. There are three deep gouges in the metal.

“Aw hell,” she mutters, her voice as gravelly and snarl-like as Jack remembers, but at least she’s using human words now... “Hey Mohawk, you still tryin’ to get yer friend out?”

“What do you care?” Jack yells back. 

“I heard him screamin’,” she says, and the casual way she just throws that out there makes Jack shudder. “I can’t just leave him here. I know what they’re gonna do to him and it ain’t pretty. They’ve already disposed of the rest. Only a matter of time before they do it to him too. But I guess the leech still has plans. Dunno which is worse.” 

She walks up to Mac’s door and then begins cutting at the hinges with her claws, which are still dripping blood on the grey tile floor. “You weren’t gonna be able to get through this with what you could whip up from a broom closet. It’s pure adamantium.” 

Jack’s never heard of that element, not even the time Mac got so out of it from a combination of blood loss and painkillers that he recited the whole periodic table for an hour, on repeat.

“There,” she mutters as the last piece of hinge clatters to the ground. “Don’t owe you nothin’ now.” She turns and disappears through the stairwell door. 

Jack doesn’t care where she’s going. He only has eyes for the kid behind the door that’s now wobbling loosely. He pulls the handle and jumps aside as it falls into the hall with a crash. 

Mac is huddling in a corner and Jack wants to run to him, scoop him up in his arms, and just get out of here  _ now _ , but that’s not a great idea. Not only would it definitely just scare the kid more, but Jack’s none too sure how in-control of his powers he is right now and Mac would never forgive himself if he accidentally lashed out and hurt Jack. So, calm and slow and steady it is. 

“Mac, we’re gonna get you outta here. It’s okay. I’m here. We’re not gonna leave you.”

Mac uncurls slightly, blinking tearily. “J-jack…”

“Yeah buddy, it’s me. You left without a goodbye, man, that’s no good.” Jack’s trying to keep it light, keep Mac from getting more scared.  _ Something isn’t right. _ Mac’s powers are somehow tied to self-defense. Before, when he was scared or hurting, Jack would see them glowing. Now, there’s nothing. And he can’t feel heat radiating off the kid.  _ Oh no. Did they already take away his powers? _

“J-just wanted t-to keep you s-safe,” Mac whispers, but he’s sliding his hand across the floor, reaching for Jack. And then he grimaces, eyes squeezing shut, and begins to shake even harder.  _ What’s happening? _

“Mac?” Jack doesn’t care what the risk is, Mac is scared and hurting and he needs Jack there. He leans in and puts his arm around the kid, shuddering when he feels the chill of Mac’s skin under his hand.  _ He shouldn’t be so cold. _ “What happened to you, kid?”

“M-Murdoc,” Mac chokes out. “H-he was h-here. He st-stole my powers.” A wrenching sob tears out of the kid’s chest and he leans against Jack. “I c-couldn’t s-stop him. It h-hurt.” He shivers harder. “I don’t w-want them g-gone anymore. He t-took everything.” Jack feels tears burning his eyes. “Th-they’re g-gone but it w-won’t stop hurting.” 

Jack can’t even begin to imagine the agony Mac must be in.  _ It’s got to be something like phantom limb pain.  _ Jack knows more than a few guys who lost limbs. They almost all talked about a pain in the non-existent place. 

“I-I just want it to st-stop,” Mac whimpers, burying his face in Jack’s shirt. “Jack, it h-hurts so m-much.” Jack feels all the agony of his inability to take away Mac's pain. He gently runs his fingers through Mac’s hair.

“I know, buddy. I know it hurts. I know.”

“It won’t stop,” he whispers. And then he screams. Jack feels a shiver run down his spine at the sheer agony in the kid’s voice. 

“Oh, oh, Mac. Oh Mac.” 

There’s a slamming sound, and Jack peers through the door to see Cage rush in, her eyes wide with horror. “Jack?”

“I’m here. I got Mac, but he’s in bad shape.”

“I thought you were dead. Harper Hayes is loose in here and she’s on a rampage. And the lab back there…” Cage shudders. “It’s a bloodbath.” 

“I know, I let her go. But she helped me get Mac out.”

“Well, she’s tearing the place apart. We have to go. Now.” 

Jack gently scoops Mac into his arms. He wonders vaguely where Murdoc is. But that doesn’t really matter. He hopes Harper kills him if she finds him. Jack wants to, but the most important thing in the world right now is the boy in his arms, and getting him out of here alive. 

Steve and Danny meet them in the stairwell. Steve is bleeding from a gash on his arm, and Danny’s got a nasty bruise on his forehead, but they’re still alive and moving. Jack tries to ignore the coppery tang of blood in the air and on the walls. Harper must have come through here as well. He’d feel guilty about letting the monster loose if he didn’t want to do the same to all of these people for what they’ve done to Mac. 

He’s grateful that Harper’s path of destruction avoids the door Riley and Bozer are planning to meet them at. He stumbles out, and tries to push away the shocked gasps he hears when the two see the shape Mac’s in.  _ We’ll worry and cry later.  _

He gently settles the kid on one of the back seats of the van, resting Mac’s head in his lap and continuing to run his fingers through his hair as Mac cries, small, keening whimpers that rip at Jack’s heart.

Danny’s driving, and Jack hopes the man doesn’t kill them all as the van roars up the switchbacks out of the valley. There’s one last part of this plan, but they need to be above the level of the lake in the distance. 

Steve already looks spent. But when Danny gives him a nod, he reaches out, and Jack sees the lake below them, the one the complex is named for, begin to ripple. The lake surges against the dam holding it back, and Jack hears the rumbling from here.  _ That place is dangerous. What they’re creating down there is horrifying. And they can’t possibly be allowed to get their hands on any more mutants. Mac is the last person they’re going to hurt.  _ A part of him feels guilty for this, for the people who might still be alive down there. Well, anyone Harper left.  _ I feel a little guilty for that too. But without her, I couldn’t have saved Mac. _ And wonderful, now he feels guilty about leaving  _ her _ to die.  _ But then again, if she’s like Walsh, this isn’t gonna kill her. Just maybe piss her off a little.  _

There’s a bone-shaking roar, and then the dam collapses, water rushing down to slam against the walls of the complex. Jack hears metal groan and concrete crumble. And then there’s nothing but water as far as the eye can see. And it might be his imagination, but it looks like there’s a shadow of a Phoenix in the water. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for how late this is! Finishing Wunderkind took up a lot of my time, and my life got really crazy a month ago and hasn't calmed down too much since...

Mac is  _ cold. _ Riley can’t believe how wrong it feels. It’s not like she hasn’t seen him come back from missions with hands like ice because he took his gloves off to work on something, or that one time he and Jack were trapped in Siberia and ended up severely hypothermic before they were rescued. It’s just that Mac hasn’t been cold since...Chernobyl.

Bozer helps her wrap Mac in a couple of blankets, she’s not sure what else they can do. He’s bruised, covered in ash and soot, but there aren’t any serious wounds, and she can’t see a way to help with the pain that’s left Mac curling into himself, screaming hoarsely sometimes for what seems like no reason. 

Jack holds Mac tightly the whole ride to the place they’re using to hole up, an abandoned farmhouse whose deed Riley’s managed to mire in a red-tape tangle of inheritances and foreclosures with a little hacking. She’ll fix everything when they don’t need it anymore. 

Carlos and Zoe have been staying there already, and when the van rolls up, both of them come running out. Riley doesn’t know what to say, so she lets Bozer do the talking. But it turns out the only one he needs to explain to is Carlos.

Zoe gasps, shuddering, as her mind must connect to Mac’s. She begins to cry, falling down bonelessly in the yard. Carlos helps her up, and it seems like she breaks the connection long enough to stumble inside. 

Danny throws Steve’s arm over his shoulder and both of them limp into the kitchen, where Carlos is waiting with bandages and equipment to sew up wounds. But Riley shakes her head when he asks if Mac needs treatment. Physically, Mac has only minor wounds. 

Jack carries Mac inside and sets him down on one of the beds; since they hadn’t known what condition Mac would be coming back in, Riley had cleaned the room until it was as close to sterile as she could make it. 

He’s shivering uncontrollably and every few minutes he goes rigid and gasps like he’s in pain. Riley steps aside to let Cage come up and run her hand gently over his forehead. When the mind reader pulls back there’s raw horror on her face.

“I’ve never seen anyone survive this level of draining,” Cage whispers. “His powers are almost totally gone.”

“What could have done that?” Jack’s made Riley watch so many horror movies that she thinks she should be imagining something from one of them.  But really, all she can see in her mind is the life-sucking machine in  _ The Princess Bride. _

“Not what. Who..” Cage’s voice is cold and angry. “Murdoc.”

Jack nods stiffly. “He told me himself. Murdoc took his powers.” Jack looks like he’s ten years older, standing over Mac and running his fingers through the tangled, ash-matted hair. Mac curls up under the blankets, teeth chattering, whimpers slipping out as he shakes. Riley feels like someone’s holding her heart and squeezing. 

“Will he get better?” She asks, even though she doesn’t really want to hear if the answer is no.  _ Could we let him suffer like this for the rest of his life? Could he even live? After all this, is he just going to die? _ At least, if that’s the case, he won’t die alone in a lab. At least he’ll have his family…

“I don’t know.” Cage shakes her head. “Like I said, I’ve never seen it before. I’ve seen Murdoc take others’ powers, but ripping them away completely has always killed the other mutant. If they don’t die, it can take weeks or months for them to heal.” 

_ Weeks or months of suffering like this? _ Riley turns back to Mac. He’s shivering and clutching the blankets around him desperately with blackened, soot-stained fingers. Riley’s never seen anything more pitiful. “Is there anything we can do?”

“Sometimes mutants recover faster if they’re kept in conditions that make losing their powers less dramatic. Keeping him warm could help him remember what it feels like to have them. That’s all I can tell you. I’m sorry.” It looks like there are tears in Sam’s eyes, and Riley isn’t sure if that’s because she’s telepathically absorbing some of Mac’s pain, or if it’s just simply pity and heartache for how wretched the whole situation is. 

Riley’s first assumption is that they could use the shower to keep Mac warm, but when she tries to turn the water on, only a cold trickle emerges. The house has been abandoned for so long that the pipes and water heater are half-ruined.

The heater is a joke. Bozer, Zoe and Danny poke around it for a while, arguing about whether it’s the coils or the gas supply or the lighter, and Bozer suggests lighting it manually until he’s reminded that that could cause any leaking gas to explode. 

_ If Mac was still healthy, he’d be able to fix it.  _ If he had his powers, it wouldn’t even matter, and even if he was just able to get up and around Riley’s sure he’d take some of the duct tape and garden tools and have the thing practically boiling in minutes. But he’s unconscious in a bed upstairs, and it’s painfully obvious that no one else can take his place.

The next few days are a blur of misery. It seems like all Mac can feel is pain as his powers try desperately to repair themselves.  _ I’m so sorry, but there’s nothing else I can do.  _ Riley sits with him and runs her fingers through his hair while he cries. They can’t do anything to comfort him, there’s nothing they can do to stop the pain. There’s no broken arm to set, no wounds to sew up. All they can do is watch while Mac writhes and screams until his voice breaks and all that’s left are breathy, gasping sobs. 

Jack flinches every time Mac cries out, as if the sound physically hurts him. He whispers constantly to Mac, trying to keep him focused on something other than the apparently unrelenting pain. The constant soft, tear-choked litany of “It’s okay, I’m sorry, kid, I’m here, you’re safe now, I know, I know, I’m here,” tears her heart out. 

Jack reminds Riley and Bozer that they need to take breaks, to get some rest themselves, but he stubbornly refuses to take his own advice. He rarely leaves the room at all, sleeping in short catnaps beside the bed, waking up the second Mac whimpers or flinches. Riley tries to keep Mac quiet during the rare moments Jack’s asleep; watching both of them suffer is unbearable. 

“Mac, it’s okay, it’s going to be okay.” She can’t actually promise that, but she’s trying to soothe him, anything to calm him even for a few minutes. It hurts to watch him lie there and cry and scream while she’s unable to do anything. Sometimes Cage can soothe him a little, or at least knock him out for a few hours, but even unconscious, Mac seems miserable.

He can’t get comfortable. His left arm seems more painful than his right, so they try to keep him from rolling to that side. If he does, he screams soundlessly until he’s able to move again. They can’t always touch him to help; sometimes it’s safe, but sometimes the heat from his body is enough to burn them instantly. At first Riley is hopeful that means his powers are coming back, but nothing gets better. 

Sometimes sparks flash out from his hands, but most of the time it’s like his power is just...gone. He still shivers uncontrollably, and when they test his body temperature it’s completely normal. Which isn’t normal for Mac. 

It takes almost a week for Mac become aware of his surroundings. When he blinks awake one afternoon and actually says Jack’s name in a way that isn’t a plea for him to make the pain stop, it feels like a victory.

“Yeah, buddy, it’s okay, it’s gonna be alright.” Jack’s own voice is rough, he’s been talking nonstop to Mac for days, trying to anchor and calm him. Jack’s voice is one of the few things that seems to help take the edge off Mac’s pain. Riley doesn’t think she’s seen Jack leave the room for more than five minutes since they got here.

“H-how?” Mac whispers, his voice hoarse and shaky. “It won’t  _ stop. _ ” The pitiful cry tears at Riley’s heart. “I just want it to stop.” 

“I know, buddy, I know. I know.” Jack brushes Mac’s hair out of his eyes. “I wish there was something I could do. I’d rip my own heart out for you if it would help you, you know I would.”

Mac nods, sniffling. “I’m so cold,” he whispers. “I haven’t been cold in months. I forgot how much I hate it.”

“I’m so sorry, Mac, I’m so sorry.” Riley rubs her hand up and down his arm while Jack holds him tightly, unconcerned with the burns that the occasional power flares have inflicted on his hands and chest.

Bozer hurries up from downstairs with a handful of blankets he’s thrown in the dryer, they’ve been rotating warm ones to try and keep Mac as comfortable as possible, and it seems to help. Whatever they do just doesn’t feel like enough. 

The others, aside from Carlos since he’s a doctor, and Cage because she can offer some relief from the pain, have mostly been avoiding the room. Riley guesses it’s pretty disturbing to other mutants like Zoe and Steve to see what could happen to them. During one of the times Jack forced her to take a break and leave the room, she talked to Steve about it. Steve admitted that having his powers taken would be a huge personal violation, akin to sexual assault.The very thought made Riley feel sick. 

She’s known all along that Murdoc is a creep, that something about his obsession with Mac goes beyond considering him just a worthy opponent. She’s overheard Jack talking in his nightmares on overnight missions before, even though she’d never tell him. Ever since that ill-fated road trip to bring Murdoc in, Jack’s woken up some nights with raw fear in his eyes and yelling for Murdoc not to touch Mac. But this is something that she never even considered.  _ As a mutant, Murdoc would know exactly what he was doing to Mac.  _ And even if Mac doesn’t fully understand that, she’s sure there’s a part of him that feels it on an instinctive level, the way a child knows something is bad even though they can’t say why, and part of her wishes she’d never said a thing to Steve.  _ I wish I didn’t know that. _

“Thank you,” Mac whispers as Bozer arranges the freshly warmed blankets around him. He huddles into them, burrowing down until all Riley can see are his eyes and hair. He’s still shivering, but it’s not as bad.  _ That’ll last half an hour at most. _ Bozer picks up the older blankets and goes back downstairs after giving Mac’s hand a squeeze.  _ He heard what Steve said too. _

“It’s not getting better,” Mac whispers. “I just want it to stop.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Jack says, and Riley hears the raw fear in his voice. “You said that after the Sandbox too. And it got better, didn’t it?” Riley doesn’t know much about Mac’s medical discharge, but she does know it involved an IED Mac couldn’t defuse in time, and a shattered femur. 

“A shattered femur has standard medical treatment, Jack. Pins and plates and braces and stuff. I don’t know how to fix this _. _ ” Mac sniffs again, his eyes are shiny with tears. “I can’t live like this, Jack.” 

“Listen, we’re gonna do whatever we have to, to figure this out. I already talked to Matty, Jill’s working on reconstructing KX7 to see if there’s a way to use that to help heal your powers.” Riley has to admit Jack may have been the smartest one of them all to suggest that.  _ What gave powers to Mac once might do it again.  _ But they only have James’s early production notes. The lab Walsh built, and everything else that went with it, was destroyed in that explosion Mac caused.  _ The early trials were dangerous and deadly. Jill has to basically fix it all again.  _ Because, of the two people who knew how to make KX7 work, one is dead and the other is their enemy. 

But when Jack brings it up, Mac just shrugs and frowns. Riley’s seen that face before, it’s the “Jack, that’s a terrible idea and we’re not doing it” face. 

“It’s worth a try, isn’t it?” Riley asks, hoping Mac won’t veto the idea on the spot because it’s scientifically not viable. He just shrugs noncommittally and shivers again. 

“I need to get this off me.” Mac rubs at the soot and ash all over his skin. Riley tried to clean his hands and face the best she could with water she heated on the stove, but they were afraid of chilling him more by trying to clean him up more than that. His movements are jerky and uncoordinated, almost desperate. Riley can imagine he doesn’t want any reminders of what he went through at Alkali Lake. 

The rest of them have been taking fairly cold showers courtesy of Steve making sure the water makes it through the pipes, but he’s insisting on them adhering to the Navy requirements of a three minute maximum. It seems like holding onto some sense of order and discipline is Steve’s way of coping with the chaotic mess they’re living in the center of. Sticking Mac in a chilly shower was out of the question, and Riley had no idea if touching his skin trying to clean him up with a warm washcloth could trigger any more traumatic memories.  _ Who knows what Murdoc did to him? _

She lets Jack manage actually helping Mac get cleaned up; Mac will be the most comfortable with him, and he doesn’t need to be humiliated more than he has been already by this whole ordeal. Watching Jack carry Mac, still wrapped in several blankets, out of bed and across the hall to the bathroom, makes her heart ache.  _ What if he’s right? What if we can’t fix this? Can we ask him to keep on living in so much pain and misery? _ She pushes the thoughts away.  _ It’s Mac. He’s going to be okay, he’s always okay. We can’t lose him. _

She realizes she probably hasn’t eaten since Bozer brought them all pancakes this morning, and she’s kind of starving. She thinks Danny’s the one cooking today, she can hear him humming in the kitchen, and fending off Steve’s attempts to steal food out of the pan before Danny’s done with it. He and Bozer have been fantastic at making sure everyone remembers the more mundane parts of life, like food. 

She sits down at the table and is immediately inundated with questions, it seems that Bozer, on his way to the dryer, told everyone that Mac woke up for real this time. Riley tries to answer the best she can in between bites of chicken and pasta. 

Suddenly both Cage and Zoe go stiff. Cage sets down her fork and pulls her sidearm, standing up from the table with a jolt that rattles everything on it. 

“What it is?” Riley asks, but she’s fairly sure she won’t get an answer. There’s a thousand-yard stare in Cage’s eyes, a mixture of anger and fear stirring in them.  _ What could scare her that much? _ Riley grabs for the shotgun Jack found in the closet and also found the shells for in a safe he managed to get open.  _ Is it Patty? Is it her whole army? Is it the Ghost? _ Riley glances at Zoe to see if she can explain, but the girl only shrugs. 

“I don’t know. The mind is so fragmented. I can barely read it; there’s almost nothing but a stream of thoughts.  _ Find them. _ ” She says quietly. “I think it’s a feral.”  _ Walsh? _

And then there’s a knock on the door. Steve steps up and opens the door with one hand, the other raising a shield of water beside him. 

Harper Hayes gives them all a toothy grin. “Miss me?”


End file.
